Full Frontal Fiction (16 page)

Tasha towed him out to the dance floor. She wrapped her arms around him and sucked his tongue into her mouth. Just when his tongue felt like it was going to be ripped from his mouth she bit down on it, hard. Within moments he tasted blood. Perhaps this was what she wanted, for she continued to kiss him as she thrust her pelvis into his. She sucked hard on his tongue. He imagined himself sucked whole into her mouth. He liked the idea. And without for a moment losing his focus on Tasha, he suddenly thought of Lydia and the girl before Lydia, and the girl after Lydia, the one he had betrayed her with. How was it, he wondered, that desire for one woman always reawakened his desire for all the other women in his life?

“Let's get out of here,” he shouted, mad with lust. She nodded and pulled away, going into a little solipsistic dance a few feet away. Alex watched, trying to pick and follow her rhythm until he gave up and captured her in his arms. He forced his tongue between her teeth, surprised by the pain of his recent wound. Fortunately she didn't bite him this time; in fact she pulled away. Suddenly she was weaving her way back to the VIP area, where Frederic seemed to be having an argument with the bartender. When he saw Tasha he seized a bottle on the bar and threw it at the floor near her feet, where it shattered.

Frederic shouted something unintelligible before bolting up the stairs. Tasha started to follow. “Don't go,” Alex shouted, holding her arm.

“I'm sorry,” she shouted, removing his hand from her arm. She kissed him gently on the lips.

“Say goodbye,” Alex said.

“Goodbye.”

“Say my name.”

She looked at him quizzically, and then, as if she suddenly got the joke, she smiled and laughed mirthlessly, pointing at him as if to say, you almost got me. He watched her disappear up the steps, her long legs seeming to become even longer as they receded.

Alex had another glass of the clear liquor but the scene now struck him as tawdry and flat. It was a little past three. As he was leaving the Japanese woman pressed several nightclub invitations into his hand.

Out on the sidewalk he tried to get his bearings. He started to walk toward St. Germain. His mood lifted with the thought that it was only ten o'clock in New York. He would call Lydia. Suddenly he believed he knew what to say to her. As he picked up his pace he noticed a beam of light moving slowly along the wall beside and above him; he turned to Frederic's bashed-in Renault cruising the street behind him.

“Get in,” said Tasha.

He shrugged. Whatever happened, it was better than walking.

“Frederic wants to check out this after-hours place.”

“Maybe you could just drop me off at my hotel.”

“Don't be a drag.”

The look she gave him reawoke in him the mad lust of the dance floor; he was tired of being jerked around and yet his desire overwhelmed his pride. After all this he felt he deserved his reward and he realized he was willing to do almost anything to get it. He climbed in the backseat. Frederic gunned the engine and popped the clutch. Tasha looked back at Alex, shaping her lips into a kiss, then turned to Frederic. Her tongue emerged from her lips and slowly disappeared in Frederic's ear. When Frederic stopped for a light she moved around to kiss him full on the mouth. Alex realized that he was involved—that he was part of the transaction between them. And suddenly he thought of Lydia, how he had told her his betrayal had nothing to do with her, which was what you said. How could he explain to her that even when he bucked atop other women, it was still her who filled his heart.

Tasha suddenly climbed over to the backseat and started kissing him. Thrusting her busy tongue into his mouth, she ran her hand down to his crotch. She took his earlobe between her teeth as she unzipped his fly.

Alex moaned as she reached into his shorts. He looked at Frederic, who looked right back at him and seemed to be driving faster as he adjusted the rearview mirror. Tasha slid down his chest, feathering the hair of his belly with her tongue. A vague intuition of danger faded away in the wash of vivid sensation. She was squeezing his cock in her hand and then it was in her mouth and he felt powerless to intervene. He didn't care what happened, so long as she didn't stop. At first he could barely feel the touch of her lips, the pleasure residing more in the anticipation of what was to follow. At last she raked him gently with her teeth. Alex moaned and squirmed lower in the seat as the car picked up speed.

The pressure of her lips became more authoritative.

“Who am I?” he whispered. And a minute later: “Tell me who you think I am.” Her response, though unintelligible, forced a moan of pleasure from his own lips. Glancing at the rearview mirror, he saw that Frederic was watching, looking down into the backseat, even as the car picked up speed. When Frederic shifted abruptly into fourth, Alex inadvertently bit down on his own tongue as his head snapped forward, his teeth scissoring the fresh wound there.

On a sudden impulse he pulled out of Tasha's mouth just as Frederic jammed on the brakes and sent them into a spin.

He had no idea how much time passed before he struggled out of the car. The crash had seemed almost leisurely, the car turning like a falling leaf until the illusion of weightlessness was shattered by the collision with the guard rail. He tried to remember it all as he sat, folded like a contortionist in the backseat, taking inventory of his extremities. A peaceful, Sunday silence prevailed. No one seemed to be moving. His cheek was sore and bleeding on the inside where he'd slammed it against the passenger seat headrest. Just when he was beginning to suspect his hearing was gone he heard Tasha moaning beside him. The serenity of survival was replaced by anger when he saw Frederic's head moving on the dashboard and remembered what might have happened. Hobbling around to the other side of the car, he yanked the door open and hauled Frederic roughly out to the pavement, where he lay blinking, a gash on his forehead.

The Frenchman blinked and winced, inserting a finger in his mouth to check his teeth. In a fury, he kicked Frederic in the ribs. “Who the hell do you think I am?” Frederic smiled and looked up at him. “You're just a guy,” he said. “You're nobody.”

Sailors

BY GENEVIEVE FIELD

IT'S THE FOURTH OF JULY so everything is burnt and everyone has a dry mouth they'll make a job of keeping wet. It's 104 in the shade so there is no shade. My high-heeled sandals beguile me, collapsed in the corner of my bedroom like broken ankles. I strap them on and we are no longer broken. We catch a cab and take it to the Lower East Side and climb twelve flights to the roof. We weave a little at the top, shallow-fucking the sweaty tar with each step toward my friends, Cintra and Melvin, in matching sailor suits. The cute bastards are kissing, Cintra's platinum pigtails tied in star-spangled ribbons, swinging. Melvin's black-dyed spikes won't let the sailor cap sit. Sweet. And that's not sarcasm talking. What kind of gargoyle-heart would begrudge a dominatrix and once-junkie their cute? Not mine, though I'm told it's been carved a funny shape. I'm from the suburbs, yes, okay. My friends admire my efforts to run the other way: rope tattoo healing pretty around my wrist, prophylactic tank in black, Kleenex-thin skirt (waxed waxy under that). “Look.” Cintra points. It's my date, on top of the water tower, having a smoke. He hasn't met Cintra and Melvin, but they know him because they are good listeners. “Didn't I say he looked like a lion, minus the mane and muscle?” “Yes, you did, honey.” He delights me as much as the shoes did before I put them on. The shoes climb to him, slipping a little on the metal rungs. Someone's built a deck up there, it's scattered with butts. He adds one, lights another. His eyes are a dry gold fire hazard, when they crinkle they might spark. But like the mouth around his cigarette, their smile is narrow. I wipe his brow like a humid window and run the sweat through his hair. It would be gentle to hold his hand, so I kneel and place it between my legs instead. “It's me and the shoes,” I say. “Together we are possessed.” “You mean repressed,” he teases. “This is repressed?” “Yeah.” It's our fifth date, counting one apology over drinks. “Let's fuck right here then.” “You're sad,” he says, “I have to find the bathroom.” On his T-shirt, a picture of a gun. “Go then, I think there's a place up the street like fifty blocks.” He shakes his cub-head and takes the ladder in a step and a jump. Down on the rooftop his shoulders square and the crowd unzips. He pauses to admire a halter-topped girl passing out fire-crackers and other dangerous favors; he slides through the trap-door floor. I kick off the shoes, lie back and watch the smog blush redder than this. Cintra and Melvin climb up and lie down on either side of me. She presses a cold beer to my cheek and the three of us hold hands, flinching together when the bottlerockets start to explode. I don't have to tell them what else has walked away.

26 Hours, 25 Minutes

BY DANIEL HAYES

HOW DO YOU ASK a woman out? Bob asks me. Just like that, I say, pointing at Bob and encouraging him, lying just a little about the simplicity of it all. You just ask, I tell him, like you're asking her for the time. What about the small talk? No small talk, I say. If you have the small talk, that's fine, but if you don't, that's okay, too. So you skip the small talk? No, I tell Bob, you don't skip it. You give it a try, but if it's not going well, go ahead and just ask her out. To what? Bob asks. To what what? Ask her out to what? To whatever you want, Bob. A vacation? Okay, no, I say. Not a vacation. To ask a total stranger to go on a vacation is like shooting yourself in the foot. Or giving her the gun and asking her to shoot. Instead, I say, it's sort of step-by-step: the coffee, the lunch, the dinner, the trip to the seventh arrondissement in Paris. So why the stalking? he asks. This bothers me a little—the way the word
stalking
has lost its prohibition in our conversations, as though Shoshana, my ex-girlfriend, was doing the talking. As if she had wormed her way into the safe, male bastion Bob and I create during these late-night discussions. I don't want to talk about Shoshana, so I ask Bob whether he ever gets the feeling that maybe he should go outside more, junk the television, rub shoulders with the masses, get some exercise, do some girl-watching if nothing else. Some stalking? Bob says, adjusting his thick glasses. No, I say, that's not what I mean.

When Shoshana gave me her phone number, after I'd actually met her in a drugstore—a pharmacy, she always insisted—I can remember staring down at the little piece of paper and feeling warmly satisfied that the numbers, in that particular configuration, met up exactly with what I already knew her phone number to be. Like magic, like coincidence. It only made sense that Shoshana's phone number, address, place of birth, place of employment, ex-boyfriend's name—not to mention her brother's dips into religious activity of a questionable nature—were consistent with what I'd already found out by following her and doing a little investigative work on the Internet. And somehow I'd thought of that as a good sign—the consistency. What was I thinking? Now, a year and a half later, I know everything there is to know about Shoshana, but I've got nothing to show for it—just this one picture of her taken in a photo booth in Galveston, Texas, of all places. And, who knows, maybe I was splitting hairs, not admitting to it all, trying to separate myself from the image of some crazed, drooling loser in a cum-stained trench coat. Maybe the whole time I'd been trying, in the narrow corridors of my mind, to give it a slightly romantic flavor, as though stalking, or whatever—following, let's call it—was just the first, initial step in the path of any romance. Like picking up a dropped pen or shaking hands or exchanging names and phone numbers or making conversation about the tabloids with a total stranger, who happens to be wearing a killer bikini, in a coastal town's supermarket checkout line. Yes, that could've been my mistake.

Truly, the first thing I ever noticed about Shoshana—besides whatever scattered information I'd gotten from furtive glances in public places—was how the bridge of her nose rode an almost uninterrupted path from her forehead to the nose's tip. Not quite a straight shot, but it was the not-quite that made up its beauty in the miniature museum of my mind. It was impossible for me—and there's no telling, but maybe it would be for you, too—to look at Shoshana without feeling as though the strength of her face emanated from the upper slope of that nose. The nose itself wasn't large, but the straightness of the bridge gave it, for me at least, an irresistible weight. Coupled with an unconscious habit of slightly elevating her chin, so that she showed off her elliptical nostrils without a trace of shame, Shoshana's nose drove me crazy. And I have no shame in telling you—though I wouldn't tell Bob, since he might incorporate the image into his daily wank—about how a month into knowing Shoshana I asked for, and was granted, the privilege of putting that nose in my mouth. No teeth, I swear. Just holding it there, giving it a place where it could secretly shine like some fistful of flashlight in a dark cavern. But then maybe I'm just speaking of my own private obsessions. After all, when I showed the Galveston picture to Bob, a few weeks into my relationship with Shoshana, he said nothing about her nose. But he did sort of shudder at the sight of her: a sudden sucking-in of air, a hand shooting to his mouth. A moment later he pointed out Shoshana's resemblance to Elisa O'Donnell, the actress.
Resemblance
is too weak a word, Bob said. The eyes, the hair, the smile. You've seen her, he said, as though speaking of some ubiquitous presence in the neighborhood. And then Bob mentioned an HBO movie, which I told him I hadn't seen. I claimed ignorance; I didn't want to add to the fervor, I guess. Yes, okay, I'd seen her in a couple of lousy movies, I finally admitted, but so what? Was Bob saying what I thought he was saying? I tried to erase the resemblance from my mind, and yet for days afterward—in bed, lights out, during frenzied sex with Shoshana—I found myself thinking of Elisa O'Donnell, over and over, in inappropriate ways.

So why did you tell Shoshana that you'd stalked her? Bob asks me. I didn't, I say. Not then. You did eventually, Bob says. It was a mistake, obviously. I heard the same voices you hear. I got vulnerable. It must've scared her, Bob says, to learn more about you than you thought you were revealing. This just comes flying out of his mouth, and I have to take a moment to consider. Have you ever stalked before? Bob asks, and I wonder why he's asking. Is he trying to depress me? Would Ricki Lake, in this situation, ask that question? Is he trying to make himself feel better, since clearly he's not the type of man who takes chances? Anyway, how am I to respond to this question? As a kid, I say—and I know what I'm doing, skipping right over the real answer and slipping into its place a convenient truth of the past—I once followed a girl named Dorothy all the way home and just stood there, out on the sidewalk, and got invited in without even asking. In her backyard, it turned out, she had a white-haired pet llama. And it wasn't even in a cage. Everywhere you took a step, there was llama shit. And her father had white hair, too—I remember that—and he was a minister in a local church, even though he didn't seem like a minister. She didn't seem like a minister's daughter, either. Bob listens patiently to the entire story and asks, What was the llama's name? Grace, I say, with no hesitation.

So that was my mistake. After living with Shoshana for a year, I happened to tell her that in a strange sense I knew her even before I'd actually met her. Not very precise, I know. It begged the question, which she went about asking after first giving me a frown that spoke painfully of confusion. Innocent confusion? So I went on to say that before I met her I'd been following her. I meant following in a couple of different ways, but I was hoping that she'd see it as the idea of a person giving thought, or paying attention, to another person even though that first person doesn't really know the second person, not personally. Like following someone's career. I may've even said that, trying to make her feel like someone other than a lonely victim of a lonely man. A movie star. I can't remember, but I probably said, You know, Sho, like someone following someone's career, like with a movie star. And she said, You mean stalking. Stalking? I didn't think that was exactly the word. But after she waited, and I gave her a complete explanation—it took five minutes or so, a quick speech that didn't really go very well, or it didn't seem to make much difference—she looked at me and said, So it was stalking. And what could I say? She made it sound like I was one of those guys who owns a restaurant and sets up a hidden camera in the ladies' room. And so, in short, that was my mistake—surprising Shoshana, popping it on her, telling of this little secret about how I knew her before I actually knew her—because it changed the nature of our relationship. I won't say it ended our relationship, though within weeks it was over. If you were to ask Shoshana why the relationship ended, she'd say something about how she lost trust in me or began to think that maybe I wasn't the person she thought I was, which scared her. How couldn't it? But take away the secret, take away the stalking, and there wasn't really much to the idea of me as an untrustworthy person. Not that I am trustworthy, mind you. Just that Shoshana didn't know enough to have any reason to think otherwise.

It's funny what you find out about women, even after you meet them. Whenever possible, Shoshana ate with her hands. Honestly, I used to marvel at it. I remember one time spending an afternoon conjuring up my specialty from cooking school:
poulet aux champignons.
And there I was, that evening, switching the fork from my left to my right hand, having ripped off a piece of savory chicken with the aid of a knife, and there she was, across the table, with the breast right up there in her face. She was using hands and fingers and, most of all, her teeth to tear the meat away from the bone, without so much as a drop of sauce smudging her face. I tried this once, just to see. Very messy on the hands and face, not to mention the food slipping through your fingers. I had to get up twice for another napkin, and it was the second time when Shoshana sighed. You're just afraid, she said. Afraid? Afraid of what? I asked her. I don't know, she said. You tell me.

One day, after the breakup, under the illusion that Shoshana might actually want to talk to me—not exactly to take back her rejection, but maybe just some of her outrage—I dial her number. Free and easy. How does this happen, after not having talked to her for all of those weeks? Well, we all suffer momentary lapses; forgive me for saying this, but I'm no different than you in that department. She might've even been expecting my call, I told myself. And so, suffering this lapse of reason, I dial Shoshana's number, and, in dialing—in remembering having punched those numbers before I'd even met her, just to hear her say hello—I begin to realize, if somewhat vaguely, my mistake: This sequence of numbers is tantamount to a secret entrance code to a place where I'm not entitled to go. Don't go there, you shouldn't go there. As it turns out, she isn't there anyway, and I hear her voice all over again and then I leave a message. The message says the following, and I'll try to keep it factual: Shoshana, hi. It's me. Don't know if it's okay to call or not. I hope you don't think I'm trying to bug you. Just calling on a lark. I was hoping, you know, just to say hello and see how you were. Are. And I guess to ask you whether it was okay—for you, I mean—to try one more time in explaining. That's me explaining. About following you, way back when. And I hope you don't think that that's what I'm doing. Following you. Now. I mean, just by calling you. I'm not that crazy. Boy, the lessons I've learned. So anyway, as usual, it's always nice to hear your voice. On your outgoing message, I mean. And then, pausing for a moment and thinking of the awful, out-of-control spontaneity of leaving a message on an answering machine—that is, my message, this message, this awful explosion of verbal mumbo-jumbo—I stop talking, hesitate, close my eyes, and then reach to hang up the phone. I put it back in its cradle like it was a long-dead baby.
Resignation
isn't a strong enough word. It's like lowering myself into a casket, which in turn gets lowered deep into the ground.

What's the hope? Bob says. The hope, I say, trying the word on for size. What hope? You mean by calling her on the phone? I ask, trying to see what Bob has in mind. But he's already shaking his head. Forget the phone call, he says. Say you never made the phone call, so then what's the hope? What do you want her to do? Bob asks. Or what did you want her to do, he says, in making the mistake of telling her in the first place? Hey, listen, I say to Bob, I just wanted to own up to our own origins. Share the stalking. Get it out there, up front. Not stalking, Bob says. Following. And then he brings a finger to his closed lips as though to emphasize the sudden importance of words in the private, dark universe of his studio apartment. I just wanted to tell her about it, I say. Let her get an inside look into the mind of someone like me. I guess I figured she'd get a kick out of it, I say. Imagine that! she'd think to herself—and I slapped my own cheeks, in pantomime—a man who follows me around and takes an interest, both from afar and up close, and I never even knew! Bob looks at me without expression and says, No, women prefer fate. Like he's standing there in a khaki jacket, a field guide in his hand, and speaking of some aboriginal tribe. Fate? I question Bob's knowledge on this point; he's guessing, I worry, or repeating something he's heard on television about the often amusing gulf that lies between men and women. Or, who knows, it could be true. Maybe you're right, Bob. Maybe she wanted to just meet me in the drugstore, pure and simple. Pharmacy, Bob says. And he brings the same finger to the same lips, like he's kissing the whisper of a dandelion.

Okay, I know what you're wondering. So the first time I ever seriously followed someone—setting aside Dorothy, the llama girl—was back in my early twenties. She was a woman who'll go unnamed who danced for a city-based ballet company, which was very impressive, since back then I was living in a city where ballet meant something. Now, living in a cultural necropolis, my balletomane days are over and gone. Anyway, I went one night and saw her perform—the piece, I remember, required her to do fish dive after fish dive, in the arms of anonymous men—and then, for the next week or two, I kept thinking about her. I thought about her a lot. I thought about what it would be like to be a part of her life. I made up a cozy picture in my mind of her apartment, its interior—a lonely place in spite of her gold-framed family photos and her nostalgic collection of stuffed animals. And, of course, I got closer: I found out things about her by reading newspapers and dance magazines and, while masquerading as a writer for a small weekly located out in the suburbs, I even made calls to the ballet company. Once, I actually made the mistake of talking to her on the phone. After that fiasco—stuttering, mumbling, excusing myself, reaching for a glass of water and sending it plunging toward the kitchen floor—I kept a lower profile. I followed her just once, one day as she came out of a morning rehearsal in a black, sweat-drenched cotton outfit that left me dizzy. I kept count, and I ended up following her for the next twenty-six hours and twenty-five minutes. Just for the experience. Without sleep, or at least none for me. And for that period I was her guardian. She wore the tutu, but I was the angel.