“My father was abusive.”
“Oh,” he said. “I’m sorry,” he said. “What did he do?”
To tell or not to tell. How did I get so quickly to the heart of my wounds? What had just happened?
“Sexual,” is all I could manage. Then I wished I was a part of the shrubbery or tableware. Idiotidiotidiotidiot. Why don’t you just slit open your own belly like a caught steelhead and spill it out on the table, moron.
“That sucks,” he said. And then, “I hope something karmically fucked happened to him?”
Right answer. I laughed. I laughed kind of hard. “Kind of,” I said. And we were able to move past the blood clot I’d presented between us.
“Excellent then,” he said.
We switched from lattes to wine.
It wasn’t just man thing that impressed me. It was his story. How he’d escaped Reno and moved to San Sebastian, Spain, where he briefly witnessed a series of ETA events — the armed Basque nationalist and separatist organization. How he later lived in Italy where he coached a not very good Italian American football team with guys named Mauro Sassaligo, Ugo Spera, and Giacamo Piredu. How he’d interview members of the Earth Liberation Front, how he’d cyber-pirated Bill Gates Microsoft.edu. How he came back to the states — the Northwest, to be exact — to be a writer. Then he said something remarkable.
“In Italy I read about Ken Kesey teaching at U of O. So I applied to the university creative writing program and was accepted. We moved to Eugene. But the Kesey workshop had already happened. I did meet some cool writing teachers though.”
“Really,” I said. No shit? I got kind of excited but played it smooth and nonchalant. This was my opening to impress. Ahem. “You know, I was in that Kesey year long workshop. Funny, huh.”
“Yeah,” he said, “I know. I think I saw you in the creative writing department hall after that. Did you have one side of your head shaved back then?”
“What?” I definitely needed more wine.
“Did you have…a very unusual head back then?” He was staring at my hair.
Man alive. What are the odds? “Well, yes. Yes I did.” I slugged what was left of my merlot.
“If you don’t mind my asking, why the hell did you do that to your head?”
“Suave,” I said, laughing.
“No, I don’t mean to sound like asshole, your hair is beautiful. It’s just, it looked kind of…”
“Severe?” I offered.
“Severe,” he agreed.
Why did I do that. Why did I. I got butkus. Then it just sort of came out of my mouth as, “I think I did it because I was hurting. I think I wanted to mark that hurt on the outside. I think I wanted to be someone else. But I didn’t know who yet.” It almost sounded aware.
“I see,” he said, “and who are you now?”
Goddamn this guy just goes straight for the kill. Aren’t guys his age supposed to be shallow insensitive arrogants? So I said, “I’m your teacher.” We both cracked up. The kind of laughter that reveals a gaping fault line big enough to drive a U-haul through.
Then it just got ridiculous — I couldn’t stop watching his lips move and I couldn’t shut down the electricity creeping up my spine and then it became impossible to maintain the teacher student charade when he took off of his sun glasses for a moment and I took off mine and I swear he performed some kind of sly guy Marlon Brando like from Streetcar eye hoodoo on me. Still, I gave him my written comments on his work like a professional should and sent him away. But he already knew my weakness.
“ Um, Dr. Lidia? Don’t you need a ride home?”
I know you are not used to women saying this, but I wanted him to drive down into me and eat me alive.
Ecstatic State
OUR FIRST “DATE” ANDY SAID HE WANTED TO GO SWIMMING with me. He knew all about the swimmer of me from reading my stories, which he’d apparently gone home and looked up that night. Also from stories he’d been told. Now that I look back at it, it was a brave move. He wasn’t that great a swimmer. He was great at other things — but not swimming. So that must have taken some man guts. And he was mildly allergic to chlorine. When he dipped himself in chlorine for long periods, his nose ran. Non-stop. Still he asked to come swim with me. No one has ever done that.
No one.
So we swam. In a little Y pool near my rented one bedroom house in Ocean Beach a block from the sea. In the pool he fought the water with all his might. Six foot three and built like a tree his body was meant for land. But he swam with me. Lap after lap. I lapped him a dozen times. Still he swam. His nose ran. He stayed with me in the water. When I finally stopped, he looked me right in the eye. Chlorine smell between us. His eyes were bloodshot because he refused to wear goggles. He was more present than anyone in my entire life had ever been. He smiled. Snot running down his mouth. I smiled back. Fear in my chest. You can’t order a highball in the pool to calm the fuck down.
The second date he took me to a ratty little hole in the wall Ocean Beach gym where he hit the heavy bag and did mixed martial arts things I’d never seen, nearly making me cream my jeans and pass out. I know. How not evolved of me. How not feminist and Ph.D. and university professor. I’m just saying. You could have hosed me down and carried me out on a stretcher.
Then he wrapped and wrapped and wrapped my hands and put the red gloves on me and took me over to a smaller weenier bag and tried to show me how to hit it. Everything smelled like man and sweat and leather and socks. I was the only woman there, and I was not young and hot. I was 38 and he was 28 and it looked that way. But I put my fists up. For him. For him, I tried to find some game. It was going OK, but mostly I bat at it like a girl. Not because I couldn’t bring something harder, I was an athlete back in the day after all. But I was COMPLETELY UTTERLY STUPIDLY RIDICULOUSLY SELF CONSCIOUS. Middle-aged woman with hot guy in an O.B. gym.
At one point he tried to help me improve my jabs by having me put both gloves up in front of my face — I didn’t realize I was supposed to protect my face, I was intently staring dreamily at his, hoping to look at least minimally sexy. So when he jabbed at my little red paws? I ended up punching myself out. My eyes watered and my nose went numb for a bit. But I stayed. And I hit the bag harder and harder. And when I hit it as hard as I could? It felt good. Um, really good. I hit it and hit it and hit it. I hit it like I was hitting my own past. Then he hit the heavy outdoor bag and knocked it off its metal moorings.
So, yeah. You know those illustrated Karma Sutra books? Here’s a brief run-down: stimulations of desire, types of embraces, caressing and kisses, marking with nails, biting and marking with teeth, on copulation (positions), slapping by hand and corresponding moaning, virile behavior in women, superior coition and oral sex, preludes and conclusions to the game of love. Oh and it describes 64 types of sexual acts (10 chapters).
Upstairs in his house was a carpeted little attic room. And him. And me. And a bottle of wine. And pot. And no clothes. I don’t know what the neighbors heard but I can tell you it must have been a startling interlude from the mundanity of their nightly televisions. One thousand nights in this first night of his mouth on the mouth of me my mouth on the cock of him his fingers inside my wet inside my ass my fingers around his throbbing inside his ass my legs on his shoulders my feet over my head then sideways like scissors then me on all fours then him underneath me riding and riding then him lifting me my whole body a muscle my back on his belly and chest me on top of him on my back his hands working my tits his hands working my clit my back arching up his cock so far up me my spine went loose my legs shook I screamed and screamed I bit his neck I scratched a self into the very flesh of him I pounded my body down onto him I made an ocean of bed. The sleep of lovers.