Soon after pulling out and leaving the bathroom, I asked for a check. We agreed it had been a lovely night, but both of us also agreed that it was important not to act impulsively in terms of deciding what kind of relationship we'd have.
"I love to fuck you, but I don't like you," she said. "Just kidding."
I didn't like her at all, but as long as my dick was shoved into her ass, pussy, or mouth, I was in a state that can only be described as rapturous.
The weather had already begun to change, and by the time I got home from dinner, spring had arrived. When I awakened the next morning, I breathed in the sweet fragrance that betokens the first flowering of the season. The bare branches of the old oak outside my apartment were now covered with buds, and without going on with a stereotypic cataloguing of seasonal changes, suffice it to say the once frozen streets-previously devoid of life-now bore witness to chirping as the first migrations of birds descended from the skies. My life lay before me. The first hint of mild weather filled the streets with young women in abbreviated attire. Thick woolen sweaters and turtlenecks were replaced by revealing halter tops. Newly pierced belly buttons were paraded and rear views, with their prominently displayed thong waist bands, provided a tantalizing peek into the freedom of our current youth culture. I was no longer young, but I wondered if perhaps I had limited my horizons. Monica had stirred something up in me, but to believe she was the only woman who could provide me with a life of sexual satisfaction was actually placing too great a burden on her. Did I need to experiment more before I put all my eggs in one basket? I didn't want to experiment more. But if I was going to settle down with Monica, I had to accept her, warts and all (unlike the character in Hawthorne's short story, "The Birthmark," who ends up killing the woman he loves when he tries to remove the one thing that mars her perfection). My need to edit every word that came out of her mouth was no fairer to her than it was to me.
03
We were taking a break. I wanted to see her, but I didn't. Within the context of the relationship, time increasingly came to feel relative. Days could go by without my realizing it, and yet I had afternoons when I wished Monica would call, and the hours passed agonizingly slowly I would pick up the phone then put it down fearing her boyfriend was home. One day I got a call from Monica at one of those extraordinary moments when I wasn't even thinking of her pussy I was caught totally off guard, and for a moment I didn't even know who she was. If truth be told, it wasn't the word Monica that flitted through my consciousness when I thought of her, it was the feeling of being engulfed by a hot, hairy thing that surrounded my hard dick, with muscles like hydraulic clamps that sucked me in almost against my will, and at times, apparently against my better judgment. I may even have asked, "Monica who?" before I blurted out, "Just kidding." If I was kidding, she didn't find it funny Her voice was tentative when she asked if I was doing anything that night and if I wanted to go back to The Golden Cock.
"I don't know I wasn't that crazy about the food." It was going to be one of those conversations where you're damned if you do and damned if you don't. Telling her my truthful opinion about The Golden Cock only showed my ambivalence about the relationship-but if I didn't tell her, I would be setting a precedent. I'd be hiding my feelings. What was the point of our cementing a bond based on lies?
I wanted to fuck her, but I didn't want to get together with her-which is a pragmatic way of explaining our existential dilemma. The form the conflict was taking was an inability to decide where to eat.
"I'm not that hungry right now," I said. There was an angry silence at the other end of the line, followed by a hang up.
I immediately called her back.
"1 will be hungry," I said. "So let me check my 1 don't mind The Golden Cock."
"Look, tonight may not be a good idea anyway. I'm having my period."
We weren't great conversationalists, it turned out, but we had other things. Some people are capable of great exchanges of words, others are better with fluids. We fell in the latter category. It was the cross we had to bear.
1 decided to give in, and we agreed to meet at The Golden Cock. Even as a boy, having a passionate first affair with my mother,1 learned that when it came to women you had to make them feel they were getting their way It assured them you cared. Going back to The Golden Cock was like a reunion; everyone remembered us. I felt like an honorary member of the clubthe club of gay men that is. Our spirits were high and we felt accepted. Wafted away on the cloud of good feeling, and despite her period, Monica insisted on retiring to our favorite stall in the men's room-which now felt like a second home-before we'd even ordered. Just for the record, The Golden Cock has wonderful goose. The portions aren't big, but they're thick and crispy. My last memory before our candlelit dinner was served was of Monica impaled on my cock. (I remember thinking that she had been lying about her period.)
She reminded me of the time my mother took me to the rodeo after she had blown me at the Hyatt in Cincinnati. 1 was very much in love with her back then, and when 1 saw that cowboy riding his bucking bronco I felt an immediate compulsion to have my mother on top, riding me the same way. It was a fantasy that became a reality when we returned to our room after the rodeo. Now in the bathroom with a constant stream of gay couples fucking each other up the ass and getting or giving blowjobs or golden showers and Monica crying out, "More, more, more, harder, harder, harder," I was reminded of the halcyon days of my youth, when it was just mom and me against the world. The only difference was that life was simpler back then. There was none of the Sturm and drang that Monica and I had stirred up. You don't choose whether you're going to have a long term relationship with your mother. She's your mother! You don't have to worry about things like commitment. Grilled cheese was my favorite sandwich when I was a kid, and mom made great grilled cheese sandwiches. She'd always have a buttery one waiting for me with a cold glass of milk when I got home from school. After I was done eating and watching television, she'd walk into the kitchen naked or with some new lingerie she wanted to try on for me, and I'd go down on her as she stood by the table pretending to look over my homework.
When Monica and I walked out of our stall, there was clapping from the line of gay men who were waiting to relieve themselves on each other. I don't know too many heterosexual couples whom gay people, with their high testosterone levels, would consider in the same league when it comes to intensity of sex. I had come out of my usual post-coital Monica haze, not knowing who or where I was, to experience feeling flattered and successful about something that I couldn't presently ascertain. Here were all these strangers with their cock rings, their tattoos, their pierced urethras, noses, lips, eyebrows, and even toes, all clapping wildly for us. The reception wasn't quite as enthusiastic in the dining room.
The Golden Cock had a double standard. On the surface they were a four-star restaurant with slightly fey-looking waiters and a maitre d' who wore a fez. The bathroom was like the satanic force of the Manichean heresy; for both the staff and patrons, that was obviously the appeal. They liked to feel they were sneaking away to do something naughty. The dining room was quite formal looking for a barbecue joint, with its China services and thick white candles on the tables (one of the men on line in the bathroom had already swiped one of these, and as we passed him he was in the process of covering it with that manna of the gods, Astroglide, before shoving it up his own ass like an oversized suppository while waiting for an empty stall). In my disoriented state I had re-entered this dining room with my dick hanging out of my pants. I wouldn't even have noticed if the maitre d', proudly displaying his "I love Michel Foucault" button, hadn't scampered over to tell me, "Appropriate attire is required in this area." Luckily this was a sophisticated crowd. Heads turned as we walked by the two tables closest to the men's room, but before the maitre d' even got to me, the dining room had become impervious to my indiscretion and was awash again in the high-pitched gay chatter that sounds like a coop full of free-range chickens.