Fake House (3 page)

It was a dreadful performance, and I’m sure he saw right through me. Maybe I can figure out a way to get him fired before I bring my bride over.

Sitting in Chinatown restaurants, surrounded by Asians
laughing and yakking away as they eat, I’ve come to realize that they are simply more forthright about life’s amenities than we are. There is a recently released film directed by this Chinese guy, Ang Lee, called
Eat, Drink, Man, Woman
. I didn’t see the film, but I know what the title means: Eat, drink, man, woman.

Then there is this other film called
The Ballad of Nagasaki
, by a guy named Arakawa. In it there was this Japanese hick who had just lost his wife. The entire village helped him to find a new wife. She arrived from the next village, sight unseen. First thing she did was stuff her face with potatoes, she was starving, then she lay next to him. They had sex without saying a word to each other. Afterwards he said, “I feel much better.”

When I go to The Office, a go-go bar on Fifteenth Street, I see men from all over, a veritable assembly of the United Nations. Nowhere else can I hobnob so freely with Pakistanis, blacks, and Mongolians. Each man nursing an inconsolable hard-on, wearing a shroud of pussies, we are all humbled, pared down, incorporated. We must all share the nude girl hanging upside down from the greased pole. She’s presently doing a series of queer sit-ups to polite applause. None of us can have her. The best we can do is to give her a dollar. It is the most democratic place on earth. All the sexual surplus of society ends up in a go-go bar; it’s where men go to celebrate their equality. I’m reminded of a Cézanne painting called
The Eternal Female
, in which men of various professions and pretensions, high and low, are depicted gazing up at a naked woman hovering over their heads.

Apropos of prostitution and pornography, a symbolic defilement of intimacy and a séance of lovemaking, respectively: I would never patronize a whore because I cannot consent to sex without commitment, with neither preface nor prologue, but neither
will I allow myself to be titillated, or moved to the depths of my soul, by a photo of a naked female, the cheapest form of idolatry. (Masturbation, which is unavoidable, I consider a breathing exercise, a cardiovascular fitness program, a trip into the future and a jogging of the memory. Time traveling.) I avert my eyes from lingerie ads in the newspaper. If I must read an article on the same page as the ad, I cover the exposed flesh with a book or a bagel.

A remedy to the aforesaid perversions, of course, is the go-go bar. In front of me is a real woman, after all, doing what all women do, one way or another. She is alert to my presence, as I am to hers. We have a relationship. The slightest shift in mood in either party is duly registered by the other, a yawn, a pitying smile, a hardening of the facial features betraying irritation or disappointment.

But I must admit that any relationship I can have with a woman in a go-go bar is bound to be unbalanced, asymmetrical. I’ve thought a lot about this. To start with: she’s naked, and I’m not. While she could only read my face, I could read her entire body. Because clothing serves to isolate the face, a naked woman, in shedding her clothes, surrenders her right, the right of any civilized human being, to frame her own face. If I was with a clothed woman, that is, with a framed face, I would gauge her fluctuating moods primarily by deciphering her facial expressions. I may scrutinize her other exposed flesh, but I could only do it on the sly, in piecemeal fashion, because of the tyranny of her face.

When a woman is naked, however, her face loses its authority. Now I’m free to look wherever I please. Now I’m free, even compelled, to look away from her face. And because I’m not really paying attention to her face but seeing it only out of the corner of my eye, it can no longer cajole, curb, pace, or ridicule my
responses to her. The rest of her body is mute, blind, and cannot censor my curiosity.

Also: because she is being probed simultaneously by so many sets of eyes, not just mine, what I’m doing, what all the other men are doing, becomes less selfish and subjective, less perverted, and more universal and scientific. We’re on a joint expedition to a faraway land, a field trip to the zoo.

All that said, it must be added that a woman’s naked body can never betray as much as a man’s. Hers is a mask, with the nipples the eyes peeping through the eye holes, the only indicator of tension within. With a man, on the other hand, every psychic tic or turbulence is conveyed immediately by an erection, or at least half an erection. Anything at all can cause a man to have an erection. One can say that his body is more guileless and articulate than hers: a blunt instrument, it always speaks its mind. For a man, clothing serves the absolutely essential purpose of hiding his erections.

The idea itself, of procuring a mail-order bride, can be traced to the fact that a friend of mine from undergraduate school married a Chinese woman two years ago. The pale pink wedding invitation arrived in the mail. Brian Panzram will be wedded to Josie Woo. I called Brian up. I said, “So, Brian, who’s this Josie Woo?”

Then Lafcadio Kerns, an associate at our firm, showed up with a Thai girl at last year’s Christmas party. She was much, much too beautiful for someone like Laffy, a squat fellow with a beer belly and eyes dilating in two directions. I was standing next to Justin by the hors d’oeuvres table. “Check out Laffy’s squeeze,” I said.

Justin crammed a slice of pâté-smeared bruschetta into his mouth, chewed it with his mouth open. “Yeah?”

“That’s not right.”

He chuckled, flushed his mouth with martini.

“Look at her!”

“Relax, Fritz.”

“Look at him!”

“You think she’s that hot?”

“Are you blind?!”

“She’s all right.”

“Every man should have a girl that pretty. How come you’re not with a Chinese girl?”

“I would ask an Asian girl out for a date if I were white.”

An odd thing for him to say
, I thought. I even thought he had said, “I would ask an Asian girl out for a date if only I were white,” but then that really wouldn’t make any sense.

“And why do you care?” he continued.

“Never mind, never mind,” I waved him off and walked away.

The music was vibrating the floor. I went to the bar and said, “Give me some of that Puligny whatever.” The grinning bartender tilted the heavy bottle over my trembling flute. I drank it in one gulp, spilling half of it on my shirt.
It’s time to leave
, I decided.

I sidled along the wall, dodging the tuxedoed and black-dressed figures convulsing to the techno music. This ape-din, why do people listen to it?

I almost made it to the door when Laffy intercepted me. “Yo, Fritz!” He was hoisting a bottle of Cristal over his nearly bald head, spilling champagne all over it, a drunken gloat. One of his hands appeared surgically sewn to his girlfriend’s bare midriff.

“I’ve got to go. I’ve got to go.” I tried to ward him off.

“I’d like you to meet Grace.”

“Nice to meet you, Grace,” I extended my hand, “I’m Fritz Glatman.”

“I’m Grace.”

“Grace what?”

“Grace Kittikasem.”

“What’s that? Thai?”

“Very good,” she said, with discernible disdain in her voice.
If only we were alone, you fuckin’ bitch, I’d teach you some American manners
. Laffy was frowning at me, his eyes dilating in two directions. It was all I could do to refrain myself from punching him in the face.

T
HE
U
GLIEST
G
IRL

M
y consciousness begins with the fact that I’m an ugly girl. And not just any ugly girl but the ugliest girl. Not counting the freaks, the harelips, the Down’s syndromes, the ones with lye splashed on their face, born without a nose, an extra mouth, five ears, and so on, I am the ugliest girl.

When I cross the street in front of a car, I always stare straight ahead and never look in the driver’s direction. I do not want to startle him with my ugliness. Even in my dreams I do this: avert my gaze from the driver as I cross the street.

At a party, should there be another ugly girl in the room—perhaps someone only half as ugly as I am—it would be me who would be embarrassed. I would be embarrassed for her because as soon as she sees me, I become her mirror. By being there, I expose her, interfere with her attempt to pass. My presence would ground her.

Without me there is a possibility that she could forget, for
a moment, who she is. Surrounded by beautiful people, she might even lapse into the illusion that she is one of them, that she belongs to them and not to her own ugliness.

But with me in the room, this possibility is eliminated. Suddenly there is a subgroup, a minority of two, a sorority of ugliness.

An ugly face does not transcend, cannot transcend: it is made of mud. Molded on a wobbly potter’s wheel, it has no structural integrity. An ugly face descends, points downward. It is collapsible yet heavy. It is something soggy, macerated, on the verge of falling apart. All diseases lurk beneath its skin. It gives off a stench one can smell even in a photograph.

A beautiful face adheres to five, maybe six models, whereas an ugly face can shoot off in any direction. Ugliness is inventive, restless, adventurous, promiscuous.

The slightest misplacement of a nose or an eye—say by 1/32 of an inch—can produce the most insidious effects. An ugly face is a parody, not of a beautiful face but of ugliness.

A beautiful face will be forgiven for all inanities and cruelties spewing from its mouth—even vomit from a beautiful face is a turn-on—but an ugly face will be held accountable for even the smallest indiscretion.

The life of a face is capricious. Even the most subtle shift in lighting or mood—in either subject or object—can transform a beautiful face into an ugly one. This said, it is true that a genuinely ugly face can never appear beautiful under any circumstance.

A man who falls in love with an ugly woman will never be able to forgive her for his degradation. All of his rationalizations will be useless. Shocked and humiliated, he will think,
My God, what am I doing?
before he exacts his revenge on her.

The revulsion caused by an ugly face is tempered by pity and indifference. Whatever violence it may induce is different in kind from that which is aroused by a beautiful face.

Great beauty enrages. It disturbs. Great beauty invites desecration.

There is a photograph of me at five years old. There are eight of us, all girls. At the front, in a pink-and-white-striped dress, and standing with her legs wide apart, is Kelley Henchey. She’s the most beautiful. That’s why she’s front and center. The rest of us huddle behind her. I’m at the back, my face hidden behind the right shoulder of Linda Oakes, with only the top of my head visible.

The adults did not pose us. We posed ourselves. Even at five I knew.

As kids we would play “Spin the Bottle.” We would all sit in a circle around an empty soda bottle. The bottle would be spun and whoever the bottle pointed to consecutively would have to kiss each other.

I was included in this game only to add suspense to the proceeding. The boys kissed me stoically, bravely—some even pretended to enjoy it. Steve Breitenfeld made a point of sticking his tongue in my mouth, shocking all those present. We were both eleven. In seventh grade I sat in the gym bleachers during sock-hops
and watched as my friends rubbed their bodies cautiously against boys during the slow numbers. I thought of the possibility of my being a lifelong virgin, and of becoming a nun or a lesbian.

But then I had my first sexual experience.

The Wainwrights lived next door to us. When Mr. Wainwright mowed his lawn, he would mow ours also, we were such good neighbors. They had two kids: Lauren, who was my age—we were both twelve—and Jason, who had just entered college and was seventeen.

It was New Year’s and I was over at their house. Jason was watching a football game. He was sprawled on the carpet with a can of beer in his hand. No adults were around. Lauren and I were pretending to be cheerleaders. We would shout, “Michigan, yahoo!” and kick our legs up. At one point Lauren said, “Jason, I want to stand on your shoulders.”

Jason lifted Lauren up onto his shoulders. Lauren said, “Rah! Rah!” and Jason said, “Rah! Rah!” and then Jason let his sister down and said to me, “Now, Becky, your turn!”

He crouched down so that I could climb onto his shoulders. I sort of squatted on his shoulders, then rose slowly, my hands holding his hands. After I stood up straight, he placed a hand behind my buttocks to help me keep my balance. I gasped because his hand was right against my panties—I was wearing a skirt. Lauren pretended she didn’t see this. She said nothing. No one said anything. Aside from the noise from the TV there was no other noise in the room. We all pretended to be watching TV. Everyone held their breath. Without looking up at me, Jason slipped his thumb under my panties. At first he didn’t do anything. He just kept his thumb there. Then he pressed and pressed,
trying to find the point of entry. Then he started to wiggle it. I stood perfectly still while he wiggled his thumb inside me. Lauren could no longer contain herself. She turned to us and yelled, “Stop!”