It's a good thing I'm a set designer because the off-again, on-again nature of the work allowed me to carry on an intense relationship in the beginning. When I'm out of work, as I was then, I have loads of time. Following my return from Key West, my schedule was more complicated, yet still manageable. I'd be flown out to Duluth or Boise for a day's work on shows that were already running and return home in time to find my dick as deeply embedded in the soft wet folds of her pussy as the engravings are on the sarcophagus of an Egyptian empress. But a busy period followed. I had to mount My Fair Lady in Columbus and Annie in Green Bay and after that West Side Story in Austin. The more 1 was called away for shows, the fewer chances there were for these occurrences. 1 was so desperate that 1 thought seriously of canceling some of my gigs, but then lost my nerve. People who do what I do are a dime a dozen. If I stopped showing up, I'd get the kind of reputation I didn't need. On the other hand, my old Tourette's was beginning to surface-primarily because I wasn't getting pussy. I'd call out "mommy" when I was trying to make a point to the director of a show I screamed out "I wanna fuck" as an Annie in Burlington, Vermont, crooned "Tomorrow"
"Seek and you shall find," Bill said on my return home from one of these outings.
"What's fir dinna?"
"Your favorite."
"Not meatloaf."
"And you don't have to ask, of course mashed potatoes." I had fucked her the minute I'd gotten back, and I'd forgotten to eat. I didn't realize how hungry I was. I chopped off huge pieces of the meatloaf, submerging them in Bill's creamy mashed potatoes, but I was so hungry that I couldn't really appreciate the parsley, the sage, the cumin, the subtleties of the curry-like seasoning that makes Bill's meatloaf so special. Don't get me wrong, it's your classic American meatloaf rounded at the top with a twist of ketchup, but Bill always puts a little extra zing into it that's akin to finding an actually useful saying inside a fortune cookie. I realized another thing as I was wolfing down the food. I was so horny by the time I saw her after these trips that I was not enjoying most of the fine points of the fucking the way I had in the days before this busy spell. I was like a hunter with a ten-gauge shotgun in the middle of deer season. 1 was just looking for my target. 1 was so worked up by the time we got together that 1 could do little more than thrust my dick right into her hot hole. There was none of the touching, the buildup, that tantalizing foreplay, where I'd suck on her nipples as she stuck her finger up my ass, that occurred on the days we saw each other before these trips. 1 missed tugging her dingleberries in the heat of passion. It had been a long time since she stuck her nails in my back and drew blood as she sunk her teeth into my lips. Not only that, l never knew if she would be waiting.
I had to do something, but I felt paralyzed by inertia. It was the paradox of my condition that I could be made so passive by the explosiveness of our sexuality. I started to rehearse in my head what I would say to her. I know, I would say about her boyfriend, that you have been with him for a long time, and I know that you've had a satis[ying relationship, orjou wouldn't be with him. I don't know him and he doesn't know me. However, I have the distinct feeling that I have something to offer that he doesn't. Now that was succinct and to the point. 1 wasn't grandstanding. I wasn't allowing myself preposterous Wagnerian protestations of love. 1 wasn't saying anything that was going to make her nervous. 1 was calling a spade a spade. Volcanic fucking. That's what 1 had to offer that her boyfriend didn't. Then I went on to rehearse how 1 was going to stop myself from jumping right in the sack the minute she unzipped my fly Would 1 grab her by the wrist for instance? That seemed too remonstrative. 1 had to practice restraint. 1 used some of the imaging techniques I'd learned in therapy years before when I was trying to reshape my libido. I visualized her holding my penis in her hand, even putting it in her mouth. I visualized holding her gently as I intoned the magic words I want a committed relationship. No, not I want a committed relationship; I want a committed relationship withyou, I want to commit myself toyou. I loveyou. No. I couldn't tell her I loved her; I didn't know her well enough. But love was something I imagined coming out of the increased commitment we would be making to each other.
Then there were other questions. Did I want the boyfriend to move out so I could move in? Did I want the boyfriend to move out so I could simply be alone with her after we fucked? Did I want a trial period in which he moved out, but still remained in her life, so she could weigh the two of us side by side and decide what she wanted? I started to think about some of the inanities that had popped out of her mouth in the few moments we'd been together after sex, and I found myself facing a harsh reality. When the flames of passion turned to embers, I might find that I was happier with the old relationship and its anonymous moments of ecstasy. I might look back fondly on our bodies, locked in the heat of passion, finally disentangling like the midair refuelers that are used to keep B-52's aloft. If I decided I didn't want a "committed relationship" after getting her to drop the boyfriend, I wasn't going to be able to go back to where we were. I would end up not getting fucked at all. I had to be careful before I did anything drastic.
(FS
If you've ever tried to look up someone's number in the phone book when you don't know their first or last names, you'll have a good idea of what I was going through. But I had no other choice. Once I'd gone to Key West and started thinking about her as a real person with an identity, I was in trouble. I had lost a good part of the animal connection. I had become willful. I had made a decision. I didn't just want to see her whenever it happened, I wanted to have what I wanted when I wanted it. If I was going to see her on this basis then I had to know who she was. I had to call her up and make a date. And for that, all I could rely on was the White Pages. I held my county telephone book in my hand-all 593,428 names, not including the businesses, letting the pages run though my fingers. I sat with my legs tucked under my butt, the book in my lap, and my left hand cupped over my right. This is the classic Zen meditation position. 1 cleared my mind and nothing came. I would simply have to begin with A and see if anything rang a bell. 1 was at "Stella Agnew" when 1 saw I was in trouble. I'd be sitting there all day and all night and the next day and the next night. In the meanwhile, my eyes were growing heavy and I was falling asleep. I realized when I got to Stella Agnew's name that I'd have to reread the previous five columns, which went all the way back to "Arthur Adair." There was an "Arturo Adair," but that wasn't a girl's name, and a "Gabs Adair," which certainly was. "Preston Adair" sounded familiar. Could that have been the name of her boyfriend? I tried to visualize her buzzer, but nothing was coming. Her boyfriend's name wasn't Preston Adair anymore than it was Alexsandr Solzhenitsyn.
I have an intuitive mind. I've been able to get out of some tough jams by instinctually sensing what my next move was going to be. I've been around the block a few times. What do 1 do when a muscle-bound gang of tattooed bikers approaches me and they're all swinging their nunchuks? What do 1 do when my car veers out of control and does a 360? For those of you who weren't born with the kind of intuition I was and who don't know what I'm talking about, the answer is, 1 get the hell out of there as fast as 1 can. But besides my intuitive side, I'm also mystically inclined. 1 have a tendency to believe that my mind is aligned with the higher forms of spiritual life that guide our universe-a trait known in the therapy trade as magical thinking. I'm the kind of guy who'll close his eyes and pick a name out of the hat. After all, I had already picked her out of the crowd once when I got back from Key West-unless of course the tomboyish-looking woman was just another hot fuck. But now I was letting my subjectivity get the better of me. Before I knew it, I would infer it was impossible to verify her existence at all, that she was an apparition, that she was a figment of my imagination, that she was all mind when the reality was SHE WAS ALL BODY! It's astounding the places the unfettered intellect will take one when it is not constrained by the guiding light of reason.