Zen and Sex (9 page)

“I do want to make love to you, Martin. But I want it to be real.”

“I wasn’t being ‘real’?”

“No, Martin. You were giving a performance.”

“Wow,” I say with all of the petulance that I didn’t know that I had. “Nothing like a harsh critic to brutally bash opening night performance.” I know I’m being childish and maybe unreasonable, especially when I know in my heart that she isn’t trying to bash me, but I’m hurt and can’t seem to stop myself from lashing back with immature petulance. In fact, I feel like getting the heck away from here as fast as my feet can take me and I don’t care how I’m going to get home.

“Where are you going?” she asks with concern and for the first time I hear uncertainty in her voice.

“The mood’s broken,” I say, still trying to find my other shoe. “I’m going to leave while I still have a semblance of male ego left.” Which is only partly true. Perhaps the main reason I want to leave is because the momentous sexual desire which I had for her earlier on managed to find a shovel somewhere in the fertile crescent of my libido and proceeded to dig a hole so deep that it jumped right in and covered itself over with a mountainous size of densely compacted earth. Translation: if I stay and we get sexual again, I won’t be able to get it back up. Rather than face that further humiliation, I feel that it is more prudent to flee.

I take a taxi and all the way home, sitting in the back, I feel woefully sorry for myself. What is her problem? You don’t criticize a guy’s performance the first time out. I had to leave. So what if she thinks I’m immature; no way could a guy get it up after a critique like that. And I was
really
looking forward to having sex.

6. How To Drive A Woman Crazy In Bed

Luckily for me the next few days were busy with work. I have a job for an advertising company pushing some line of third rate breakfast cereals which nobody has ever heard of. Maybe they are for the foreign market, Bulgaria or Turkey or some such country, I don’t much care. I’m just here to take their photos.

I’ve been trying not to think of Frances, but it’s next to impossible; all I can see in my mind’s eye is her gorgeous, soft and vulnerable brown eyes looking forlornly at me as I run from her bedroom. What is wrong with me? Maybe I’m just not relationship material and I should just stick to short-term romances, not that I’m getting a lot of opportunities at those, either.

I really don’t have a lot of sexual experience. I suppose that I was a little…no, a lot intimidated by the vastly superior sexual history of an older woman. Does every guy fear being laughed at by their sexual performance? Why do they refer to it as a performance, anyway? Performers need an audience and having an audience “watch” a performance turns every person in attendance into a critic. I’d hate to read the reviews of some of my past performances, that’s for sure. I can only imagine what the headline for last night’s performance would be: “Lead performer forgets his lines and runs offstage with his arms flailing about in the air, shouting, “run away, run away.””

Should I call Frances and apologize or something? What would I say? I’m sorry but last night I was a little off my game, better performances to follow? But then, I think to myself that last night was just one of those times that a guy can’t recover from. As soon as I left, I imagine that she thumped her pillow hard several times and shouted, “stupid, stupid, stupid, what am I doing trying to have a relationship with an adolescent?” I think that I’ve blown it with Frances. I should move on.

I’m working with a very small crew and the really cute assistant, Cindy, is holding up an opened box of cereal before my camera, waiting for the director to cue her before she pours the cereal into the bowl. She keeps getting it wrong but it’s not her fault. The director wants the cereal to flow down in a certain way. However, the way that the cereal flows from the aperture of the box, subject to gravity and current barometric pressure is really beyond the poor girl’s control.

On the sixth attempt, I feel like telling the director that the whole idea is lame and he’s better off using video and picking a frame from that footage so he can manipulate it in photoshop to get his so desired, “perfect” image, but I don’t. It’s my experience that director’s hate my – or anyone else’s – input. Maybe because they feel that taking advice from others makes them look like they don’t know what they’re doing, which, in many cases, they clearly do not.

“And pour,” cues the director. Cindy tilts the box but nothing happens. She panics and madly shakes the box. The entire contents of rice crispies come spilling out and cause a total mess. I keep taking shots because I think the images look really neat and might work for some random photo collages that I sometimes put together, just for fun.

“Oh, shit, I am so sorry,” Cindy apologizes, yet again. As the crew clean up and the director retreats to the craft services table, I take the opportunity to console her.

“It’s okay, don’t worry about it,” I tell her, instantly making her feel better. “It’s a much more difficult shot than it looks and we’ll probably need, like, fifty takes to get the exact shot that he’s looking for. This is perfectly normal, trust me,” I say, wielding my “been-there, done-that,” man of experience, tone which sometimes works for me, especially with interns and newbies. The way she relaxes and looks at me makes me think that I may be in with her.

“I’m not usually like this. Today, I’m like, total butter fingers,” Cindy says sweetly.

“You must be in love,” I say, flirting and fishing, all at the same time.

“I wish,” she says. “I’m married.”

As the director comes back for take seven, I mentally try to make sense of her reply. Was she saying that because she’s married, she isn’t in love? Or was she saying that she couldn’t flirt back because she is married? Either way, she is a dead end, I reckon: she’s married.

As much as I try to forget about my recent escapade with Frances, the whole sexual performance issue just keeps gnawing away at my brain. How does one know if one’s performance is a good one?

Presumably, the woman that you’re performing with is your number one critic and hence should give useful feedback as the event proceeds. What kind of feedback have I been getting? I rack my memory, trying to recollect reactions that I got from girlfriends while doing the deed. I’m not at all sure. In fact, I’m kind of appalled that I have barely focused upon and can hardly remember their reactions to my amorous efforts. I guess I just assumed that if I was having a good time, they were having a good time, too. I mean, nobody complained, so I must have been doing okay. Right?

Maybe I need to brush up on my technique, although I’m not sure exactly what my technique is or even if I have one. It’s not like they teach it in school; how’s a guy to learn if not through trial and error? Should I be reading books about it? Is it really lame if I have to buy some book whose title is, How To Make Love To A Woman? A primer.

How could I possibly look a cute clerk in the eyes if I brought that title up to the register at the book store? Maybe give her a wink and ask for her digits? I’d be a laughing stock. Maybe I’ll swing by the library and take something out at the self-checkout where no one will notice.

The non-fiction, how-to book that I settle on is called,
How To Drive A Woman Crazy In Bed
by Marti McNeice. I’m assuming that Marti is a woman and that the book is written from a woman’s perspective. If it’s written by a guy, I would feel very suspect as how could I be certain that what he’s writing, the purported wisdom that he’s imparting in the book, has the agreement and approval of women? Otherwise, it could be just the male bragging of some guy who thinks he’s god’s gift to women. I’m not a dummy.

I decide to go to bed early and take the book with me. I’m half thinking that, considering the subject matter, I might get turned on and would need to be in a private space for that kind of pleasurable reading experience. I’m not sure what the definition of erotica is but surely reading a book all about sex must come pretty close, especially if there are pictures, which indeed, there are.

I’m half-way through the introduction when the real action starts next door: Mike and Gloria are at it again.

I had intended to ask Mike to move his bed further away from our adjoining wall because of the incessant thumping when the bed goes a rockin’ but I couldn’t find an appropriate segue way that would take me into a by-the-way, the noise you guys make when you’re having fabulous sex disturbs me (and I’m not having any and I’m trying to sleep or sometimes read a book about how to have fabulous sex with an imaginary woman), so if you wouldn’t mind…

So, I smirk to myself at the irony of it all: me reading about driving a woman crazy in bed while Mike is driving Gloria crazy in his bed, ha, ha.

The self-imposed, congenial bonhomie doesn’t last, however. As soon as Gloria’s loud moaning begins, my appreciation for the irony of the situation soon evaporates. Rather than screaming maniacally into my pillow, which is my first impulse, I decide instead to head out to the front room to watch Letterman on TV and crack open a cold brewski. “Oh, god, yes! Yes! Yes!” I hear Gloria’s ecstatic declarations as I exit my bedroom.

Next day, I’ve no work so I take my camera and the book to the park and then to a nearby coffee shop. It’s not my regular coffee shop so I don’t expect someone I know to see me reading a how-to guide about how to do it properly. Out of the corner of my eye, I see group of twenty-something women at a table inside who seem to be nudging each other, looking my way and laughing. Although I’m not ruling out abject paranoia about reading such an embarrassing tome in public, I do cover the title with my hands. Better to be safe than mocked.

“Hey Martin, bro!” I hear and look up to see my old buddy, Jason, pulling up a chair at an adjacent table. He’s accompanied by two of his, also hip, buddies. Jason was someone I wanted to be when I grew up and he managed to go where I could only dream: he became a photographer of super models.

We were in photography school together, with him being in the ultra cool clique and me an unofficial member of the geek clique. Under normal circumstances we would never had hung out together. I was dating Roxanne at the time and she was good friends with Jason’s girlfriend, Debbie, so we got to play fake friends for a bit, while secretly despising each other.

“Hi, Jason,” I say. “What’s going on?”

As he settles with his buds, he asks me if I’m on my own, which I take to mean that if so, I should come join them. This, I do not want to do. So I tell him that I’m waiting for someone and that she’s late.

“What’s the book?” he asks, trying to make out the title.

“It sucks,” I say, closing and hiding the cover.

“What’s it called?”

“It’s garbage,” I answer and I actually throw it into the garbage and pull my chair over to their table in order to deflect further scrutiny.

“Meet my buddies,” Jason says, “Conrad and Jordan.” As I shake the hands of the pair of uber-chic, cool, financially loaded hipsters, I briefly wonder if parents are aware of the possible life paths that their kids take based simply upon what names they give them. When they decide to forego the more common, generic names, like Mike or Steve, and branch out a bit into the cool baby names, like Zayden or Beckett or Ryland (Conrad, Jordan and Jason also qualify), are they aware of the future, greater life success that their kids will be given, simply based upon their cool names?

“We’re all working on this huge shoot together, an international super fucking model fest, making shitloads of money,” continues Jason. “What are you up to, man?”

“I, um…I’m doing good,” I say. “Things are good.”

“Martin went straight,” Jason says to his buds, “decided not to do fashion.”

Both Conrad and Jordan look at me like I’m nuts.

“That’s where the money is, bro,” says Conrad like he’s talking to an idiot.

“What kind of stuff do you shoot?” asks Jordan, wondering if he’s missing something.

“Industrials,” I say, very matter-of-factly, “print…weddings.”

Conrad and Jordan both look like they’re trying to wipe the entire conversation from their minds, as they immediately lose interest and look around for something a tad more stimulating.

“Hey, Jay,” says Conrad, grinning. “Check out these chicks.”

Jason turns to check out the said chicks, who are the same ones inside the coffee shop, now giggling amongst themselves and presumably exchanging shameful comments about the three dishy guys talking to the poor schmuck who is studying about how guys like these drive hot women like them crazy in bed.

“Which one do you want?” continues Conrad. I’m not sure at what level of seriousness he asks the question, although I don’t doubt for a moment that Jay or any of these boys could score with any of these women if they wanted.

“The one with the rack, man,” responds Jason, who I now take to be the breast man among the group.

I watch as the three men slowly regress to horny teenagers and, through the window, visually engage the gaggle of chicks on the other side of the glass. The women are equally engaged and encourage the male attention with their laughs and giggles.

I wonder if the only reason that men and women express interest in each other is because of sex? Let’s say that nobody, male or female, had a sex urge. Would the two sexes even bother getting together? Beyond sex and mating, what would they see in each other? Would they be even interested in each other?

“Which one would you sleep with, Martin?” enquires Jason.

“In accord with the natural pecking order of things, I would sleep with whatever women you guys don’t want to sleep with.” My response elicits a genuine laugh from the guys and, for a moment, I feel an elevation in group status. “Let me ask you something,” I say, now that I have their attention. “Do you have any female friends that you just hang out with? Chicks you like but that you don’t have sex with?”

“Why would I?” asks Jason, looking like he doesn’t understand the question or maybe he does but thinks that it’s a really dumb question to ask.