Zen and Sex (8 page)

Or maybe she’s in the kitchen, exchanging cheese dip recipes with the host’s mother and the elderly next door neighbors. But deep down, in my gut, I know…she’s been stolen.

When I finally find her, my heart flat lines: it’s worse than I’d imagined. Sitting on the stairs at a party is like putting up a ‘do not disturb’ sign on the motel room front door, yet there she sits in bubbly conversation with a cosmopolitan, wealthy guy who looks like he just walked off the front page of GQ Magazine. Worse still, their knees are touching, which is a very bad sign.

I know that the thing to pay attention to in these types of situations is how she reacts when she sees me. If she runs down the stairs, swings her arms wildly around me and plants a big kiss on my lips, I will know that my fears are irrational and that I have been totally overreacting.

When Frances finally breaks her gaze away the most handsome man in the world, she reacts like her fun is over and that it’s now time to go back to doing the laundry.

“Hi, Martin,” she’ll say, “I want you to meet Roger…” but she doesn’t know his last name which tells me that they have just met.

“Papasmear,” the guy will help out, “Roger Papasmear.”

Of course he’ll say it with some continentally inflected accent that makes the last name sound sophisticated and not, well funny. As he talks about the economy or some such gibberish, I’m not able to tell if he’s from Paris, Sicily, Timbuktu or is merely a recent immigrant to the oppressed people’s ghetto on the other side of town where he’s sleeping rough with some fellow ex-pat winos.

“We should get going,” I’ll say to Frances as she reluctantly extracts herself from his deadly charms. I will feel like a parent who has just ruined his daughter’s life by embarrassing and telling her, in front of the hot, mature guy, that it’s way past her bedtime.

“Where did I leave my coat?” Frances will say as a ruse to get me to go find it and leave them alone for a few more seconds. I don’t fall for it, as I know how critical it is not to leave them alone for any further intimacy. Standing watchful of them both should prevent the dreaded exchange of business cards (the grow-up version of scrawling your phone number on a prospective date’s palm with a ball point pen).

“Let me give you my card,” Papasmear says brazenly, almost sneering at me, as if he fears little for my proximity and, at this stage, fails to take me seriously as a rival. If Frances offers up one of her cards in exchange, I will know that I am history. She goes one step further and writes her personal number on the back of one of his cards. I am so toast.

“What are you thinking?” asks Frances, taking me out of my finely constructed mental horror story, “you’re miles away.”

“Oh, nothing. Just wondering what this party is going to be like.”

“To be honest, I’m kinda apprehensive about bringing you.”

“How come?” I ask.

“All day long I’ve had these images of how disastrous it could turn out to be.”

“What kind of disastrous images?”

“We’re at the party and it’s going fine, we’re talking to some people. But at some point I go to the bathroom. It takes a while because it’s mostly women that are using it. When I come back, you’re not where I left you. You go missing. So I go looking for you and I eventually find you outside by the pool, sharing a hammock with some ditsy twenty-year-old cheerleader type.

“So I’m thinking maybe I’ll just leave you there and go home. I then decide that I’ll be braver than that and so I go up to you and immediately regret it. Your reaction to seeing me is to act like your father just opened the bathroom door and caught you jerking off to a girlie magazine. The cheerleader seems to think that I’m your aunt or something, and she brazenly writes her phone number in a crudely drawn heart on your wrist with a Sharpie.”

Frances smiles at her own horror scenario, which relaxes me into a state of abject mellowness. She even thinks like me. She’s gotta be “the one.”

“I guess I’m afraid someone young and really cute is going to make a play for you,” says Frances and smiles over at me.

“Forget it, Frances,” I console her. “Not going to happen.” I smile reassuringly to her. Something has shifted with us and we both have grown more comfortable and calmer with each other. She smiles back and I reach out and place my hand on top of hers, which I can tell, she likes. We’re so clicking.

When we finally get to the party I’m not surprised at how civilized the whole thing is. What I am disappointed, and taken aback by, is that people over forty don’t seem to know how to party. First of all, there’s no keg of beer. Having a party without providing a keg of beer is like inviting someone over for thanksgiving dinner and not serving turkey: it’s a wash. Why? Because not only does a keg of beer provide unlimited booze for everyone for the entire evening but it’s also the grand central meeting point around which everyone circulates and gets to know everyone else at the party. No keg. No beer. No fun.

Another disappointment is that these older folks don’t drink; okay, so maybe they have one or two drinks which they sip on for the whole evening and no one, not one single person gets drunk and goes on a screaming rampage through the house or running up and down the stairs carrying his best buddy over his shoulder. Boring.

I don’t see anyone sneaking around to the rear of the house to throw up or pee in the bushes when the line for the bathroom gets too long. And where’s all the single guys? There are maybe one or two single guys but I suspect that their sexual orientations are questionable; not one of them seems interested in hitting on women, single or accompanied. Granted, I don’t see any single women, hot or unattractive, either. It seems that everybody here is coupled already, probably all married since forever.

Aside from a few waves to people she knows and a couple of quick hellos, Frances stays real close to me and holds my hand the entire time, which makes me feel really wanted. She also seems to be engrossed in everything I have to say, as if my opinions about everything and anything really matter. Her attention and the way she engages me makes me feel like I’m important and have things to say.

We talk exclusively to each other and I can’t remember the last time that I’ve had such a connection with someone. We talk about subjects that I never seem to get to talk about to my friends: the state of the American economy, where we’re going, and how civilizations seem to rise and fall in a cyclical way; places in the world that we can’t wait to visit; celebrity culture and the dumbing down of the American civilization; the best freeways and shortcuts to take in L.A. getting from her side of town to mine …the discussion is riveting.

And movies. No conversation in L.A. is complete without discussing the latest movies and the general decline of movie-making in America. From movies in general, we drift into favorite movie genres. Hers is romantic comedy and to her, and only to her, do I admit that this is my favorite movie genre also. Don’t get me wrong, I like a good action movie (as long as it’s not about a super hero with comic book magic powers, whose appeal I just don’t get) but I
love
the warm and squishy feeling in my heart when I watch a good romantic comedy.

We then talk about romantic love, something that I’ve been ruminating over this recent while.

“Romantic love is what we’re conditioned to believe
is
real love,” Frances says. “Life’s a bitch until you find your one true love? Then, when you find that one person, you magically live happily ever after? It’s a crock.”

“It’s a fairy tale,” I agree. I don’t mention it but I secretly believed that Plato was wrong.

“It’s a myth and it’s totally responsible for the annihilation of adult relationships in the twentieth century.”

“Say, what?” I say, not following her at all. I stare, riveted at this beautiful and unbelievably intelligent woman.

“We’ve so bought into the romantic relationship fairy tale,” France continues, on fire as she delivers her thoughts as quickly as they come to her. “We’re told that we’re miserable without it and that it’s the only thing…
the
only thing that can bring us true and lasting happiness.” Oh, now I get it.

“I’m up shit’s creek until I meet my “Princess” and you’re screwed until your “Prince” comes along.”

“Exactly,” Frances concurs. “Think of the pressure that puts on modern day relationships.”

Suddenly realizing that we are one of the few couples left at the party, with just a nod of acknowledgement toward each other, we both finish our drinks and leave the party, still heavily engaged in our riveting conversation. There is no break in thought or discussion, even when we got into the car.

“Romantic love has its place, don’t get me wrong,” continues Frances, “but to define relationship solely in romantic terms is like describing marriage only by what a couple does on their honeymoon.”

“Wow, that’s so true. I’ve never heard it being put like that… in those terms before.”

We get to Frances’ apartment, in what seems like no time, and she automatically opens the door and we both casually walk in, still engrossed in our conversation.

“We can blame it all on the movies,” I pontificate, “but in fairness, who wants to see a movie about a middle-aged married couple with a bunch of average, well-behaved kids? People pay to see romance. The audience wants that warm and gushy feeling in their hearts that only a romantic movie can deliver.”

“That may be so,” says Frances, I can see her thinking, digging deep to find her most succinct thoughts, “but how many times can they tell the same story? Boy meets girl. Boy loses girl, then…just as girl is about to board an airplane out of town and out of his life, boy runs through the airport in a mad dash and panic, tracks her down, delivers some teary-eyed reason why he needs her so much which invariably melts her heart so much so that she tears up her ticket, changes her life and her plans in order to commit to a relationship that wasn’t working in the first place…”

Frances stops talking at this point and looking sad, adds: “Don’t get me started…” I have no idea what she means but I hesitate to ask.

“What are the most exciting parts of a relationship?” I ask as Frances pours two glasses of red wine. “The beginning and the end,” I answer myself. “In the beginning, they want to have sex. In the end, they want to kill each other. In the middle? They go grocery shopping. In the movies, of course, they edit out the middle and leave in the sex and violence.” Proud of myself, I take a sip of wine. Then I notice that Frances either isn’t that impressed with my thought process, is tiring or just plain losing interest in the conversation.

“Exactly,” she says, weakly.

“I guess we solved the whole romantic love enigma,” I say smiling but uncertain.

“I guess we did,” Frances says, as if her mind is ruminating upon other thoughts, elsewhere. “What are you in the mood for?” she then asks, her voice low and sexy.

“You mean like coffee versus wine or something?” I respond, nervously. Frances deliberately puts down her drink and moving closer, looks directly into my eyes: she wants me to kiss her. I also put down my drink and slowly move my head closer to hers. I move slowly, just in case I’ve got the signals all mixed up and she really wants a shoulder massage or something, or worse, is giving me a hint to leave, instead.

As our lips meet, I realize that my lower lip is almost trembling. Unable to control it, I’m hoping that she doesn’t notice. She doesn’t seem to mind as her kissing becomes more passionate, which really gets me turned on.

I can hear the orchestral music soundtrack in my head as my body merges with hers, my chest caressing her full, soft upper body and I’m loving every moment of it. It has been so long since my body has had sex; I can feel my body’s hunger and expectation. I can also feel Frances’ hunger for me, which is such an intense turn on that I’m beginning to fear premature ejaculation.

Realizing where we’re going with this, I consider that the hardwood floors are not at all appropriate for what’s about to happen. We need the softness and aromatic sweetness that only a woman’s bedroom can provide. I straighten my spine and, with the full-blooded, masculine image of Rhett Butler in my head, I scoop up my Scarlett in my big strong arms and without so much as a by-your-leave, m’am, I transport a willing Frances up the few small stairs and into the first door that is ajar which I am betting is her bedroom. Luckily for me, it is.

Placing her firmly, if not a tad roughly on her bed, with a full sexy, melodramatic flourish, I whip off my shirt. I am going to give Frances such a night of sheer, unabashed pleasure, the memory of which will stay with her forever. Without taking my lustful eyes off of an enraptured Frances, I unloosen my shoelaces and kick my shoes free of my feet. Unbuckling my belt buckle, with purpose and intent, in my head I am now an irresistible and irrepressible Elvis Presley in his younger years.

“What are you doing?” asks Frances, her tone of voice stops me cold in my tracks. The accompanying orchestral soundtrack’s needle (which was just reaching a crescendo in my head), scrapes off of the vinyl LP.

“What?” I ask, in a voice that is now closer to Woody Allen’s.

“We just spent the past few hours talking about the myth and triviality of movie romance and here you are, acting it out…movie sex.” Frances sounds more disappointed than angry but either way, the total 180 degree change of direction throws me for an absolute loop.

“This is movie sex?” I ask, now feeling like an awkward seventeen-year-old.

“The orchestra plays, he carries her to bed, rips off his clothes, the curtains waft due to some imaginary wind and in a soft, luminescent light, they both come at the same time.”

“Sounds good to me,” I say, wondering what her problem is.

“Martin, that’s not making love to me.” Frances says softly and by her soft tone, I know that she’s trying not to hurt my feelings. “That’s more like you’re playing out some fantasy in your head.”

Feeling rejected, if not a little humiliated, I slowly put my clothes back on. “I’m confused,” I say, unsuccessfully trying not to sound totally deflated. “If you didn’t want to have sex, why did you come on to me, like that?”