Naked Men

by Alicia Giménez-Bartlett

  He can call Genoveva whatever he wants, if she lets him, but not me. There’s a moment of intense quiet. I don’t regret saying it. All of us need to return to our proper places. Iván glares at me, but he doesn’t stop smiling.

  “I didn’t mean anything bad by it. That’s the way I am—I use pet names with cool people, just for a laugh. But if you don’t like it, no problem. I’ll just call you by your name. Or ‘ma’am’—I can call you ‘ma’am’ if you prefer.”

  Sensing the threat of a serious clash looming, Genoveva starts chattering away. She babbles about nothing, laughing wildly for no reason. I’m in a foul mood, wanting nothing more than to get up and leave. What am I doing here? Why the hell is this lowlife calling me “sweetheart” while the other one’s looking at me like we’ve known each other all our lives?

  We order dinner: appetizers and pasta—it’s an Italian restaurant. The red wine starts flowing. Javier doesn’t say a word and has stopped gazing at me so insistently. He’s probably noticed I want to get out of here, and he must be feeling exactly the same way. Genoveva and Iván talk on and on, meaningless chitchat. To think I’m paying to put up with all this! Forget it! This is the last time I’m playing this game. This kind of entertainment isn’t for me. It was fine for a while, but I’m through.

  Time passes slowly—it feels like this godawful dinner will never end. My mood isn’t improving. The swell of deep rage that flooded me has left aftereffects that I can’t shake. As soon as we finish dessert, I get up and announce that I have to leave. Genoveva’s so invigorated and happy, she doesn’t even blink. Iván looks at me sardonically.

  “Are you feeling all right?”

  “Just a little tired.”

  “Of course,” he says, and his mocking smile turns to a sneer.

  Javier practically leaps to his feet, determinedly leaving the table. “I’ll go with you,” he says.

  We exit the restaurant and start walking. He doesn’t ask anything, doesn’t speak, for which I’m infinitely grateful. I gradually relax; my bad mood dissipates. I stop thinking of Javier as an escort. He’s a man walking beside me, and the sensation is a pleasant one. I’m struck by an unexpected thought: I may never have walked with a man before. David and I never took walks. We would go to the club, the office, friends’ houses . . . always by car. We’d host dinner parties . . . No, I’m sure we never walked together. We didn’t dance either; he didn’t like dancing. Strange things to realize at this point.

  “I’m going to take a taxi,” I tell Javier. “I’m sorry, but I don’t feel like doing anything tonight. I’ll pay you just the same—I don’t want you to waste your night because of me.”

  He stops and turns toward me, a look of frustration on his face.

  “I wish you’d stop saying that.”

  “What?”

  “You keep talking about paying me. I’m not a hooker you pick up on a street corner. I’m a normal person.”

  A normal person! So stupid—I can’t believe I said that. I’m embarrassed, painfully so. But how can I explain it to her? What should I explain? I charge money, but I’m not a prostitute. She didn’t find me on a street corner, but she made contact through a friend who does these sorts of things. I’m not what I seem, but I am. Yet there must be some way to make her understand, because she’s probably going through the same thing: she doesn’t visit brothels, but she’s paying to be with a man. She’s not a slut, but she gets turned on looking at naked men, probably because she doesn’t dare go any further than that.

  “I didn’t mean to offend you.”

  “Look, Irene, why don’t we go and get a drink somewhere and talk for a while?”

  “On one condition: you let me pay for tonight. Otherwise I won’t go.”

  “All right.”

  An ambiguous condition: I don’t know if she’s insisting on paying because she doesn’t want to put my finances in jeopardy or because she’s afraid of losing control of the situation. It doesn’t matter.

  “Do you know of a place around here where we can talk?”

  He wants to talk so he can tell me about himself and rationalize his lifestyle to me. Fine, let him talk, let him say what he wants to say—sure, he’s a respectable teacher and he doesn’t enjoy this work he’s doing. The more excuses he makes, the more ridiculous he’ll seem. Maybe that way I’ll be able to get him out of my head when I’m not with him.

  We go to a bar he’s suggested. It’s packed. We sit at a table where we can talk. We order two gin and tonics.

  He goes first:

  “Do you want to tell me what you do for a living?”

  “No problem. I run the factory I inherited from my father. And you’re a teacher.”

  “They let me go—I told you that part already.”

  “Why are you friends with Iván?”

  “We met when we were kids. I didn’t see him after that, and later we met again through various circumstances. He’s helped me out a lot. You don’t like him, do you?”

  “He’s a little annoying.”

  “He can be, yeah, but underneath that hyped-up exterior, he’s a pretty cool guy. His life hasn’t been easy. His mother’s in the psych ward at a prison. His father left them and then died of an overdose. He had a rough childhood.”

  “How awful!”

  “He did what he had to do to get by.”

  The tone of her “How awful!” was distinctly sarcastic. Where does this chick get off? Does she think everybody inherits factories? Doesn’t she know terrible things happen in life, that some people are really fucked up? Does she think I’m making things up for her entertainment, to disguise the fact that I’m a depraved prostitute, a randy satyr? Why doesn’t she like Iván—is he too rough for her delicate skin? I’d like to smack her! Damn right she’s going to pay for the whole night, down to the last penny!

  “Are your parents still alive?”

  “You’ll probably think it’s funny, but they died in a car accident when I was young.”

  “Why would I think that’s funny?”

  “You think everything I say is a lie, a tall tale. You don’t believe I have a normal life, or that Iván’s hasn’t been normal. Who do you think you are? Tell me.”

  “Nobody. I don’t think I’m anybody anymore.”

  “Well, I don’t believe you’re an innocent girl too shy to sleep with a man either.”

  I’ve overstepped, but I just can’t take it anymore. Everything’s ambiguous and weird, and talking is pointless. She’s lowered her eyes and is staring at her lap. She’s probably counting to ten before telling me to go to hell.

  “I’ve changed my mind. I don’t want to go home anymore. Let’s go to a hotel.”

  I want to see him naked now. I want to watch him strip in front of me.

  “All right. Your money, your call.”

  What should I brace for? Is she going to pounce on me like a wildcat to show me what she can do in bed? Really, I’m the one who should go home right now—but I’m curious, so I decide to wait a little longer. I’ll go to the hotel, and then, whatever happens, I won’t see this woman again. She’s nuts, she’s dangerous, she doesn’t act like a normal person.

  We reprise our little hotel routine: she gets a room while I wait off to one side. We go upstairs. When she closes the door, I mechanically start undressing. I don’t look at her for a good long while, and when I finally do, I see she’s undressing too. She gives me time to observe her small body, slim but not angular, white but not milky, as sculpted and perfect as a marble statue. I take a chair and sit down, the same distance away as on our last encounter. I cross my legs to cover my genitals; seeing her has turned me on. She sits on the bed across from me. We look at each other, not speaking, but it’s so awkward that it’s impossible for me to keep quiet.

  “What now?” I ask.

  “We can talk.”

/>   “We talked earlier, and the conversation didn’t go that well.”

  “Not anymore.”

  “Not anymore. Are you sure?”

  The way she said “not anymore” was sensual, almost affectionate. Her voice has dissolved in her mouth. I feel the level of desire rising in the room like a dense fog. I get up and walk toward her. I touch her shoulder, touch her breast. I bend down to kiss her. I kiss her. She has fire on her lips, blazing flames. Passionately, she kisses me back. Her breathing is smothered with desire, panting. I gently take her by the arms and tug on her to lay her back on the bed, but she suddenly lets go of me.

  “I can’t, I’m sorry.”

  I take her arms again, smile, say quietly, “Come on, baby. It’s OK.”

  She blanches as if she’s been stung by a scorpion. She pulls away with startling abruptness.

  “I’m not your baby!”

  I try to get the seduction back on track, stroking her face with the back of my hands. She scrambles away from me, and I stay still, holding my dick and feeling like an asshole.

  “I’m sorry, I’m not mentally prepared for this today. Please go.”

  Angry, I quickly put my clothes on. Stay cool, though, you knew it—you knew something like this might happen, so don’t say anything. Nothing and then goodbye.

  “Goodbye, Irene.”

  “I’ll call you another day.”

  “Don’t call—I won’t answer.”

  “Maybe next time I’ll be ready.”

  “Tell Genoveva—she’ll find someone else for you. I’m sure she won’t have much trouble.”

  The carpeted hallway generates a sensation of freedom in me that swells when I reach the street outside. I am free.

  I’m not far enough along in my prostitution career to be able to handle these situations gracefully. If I’d met that nutcase later on, maybe I would have been less flustered, but not today. I feel humiliated, anxious. Nobody has ever treated me like that before. And yet . . . what did I expect—a housewife who would whisper sweet nothings to me? Iván wouldn’t have allowed all of this to happen. If only I could go out tomorrow and find a teaching position! I walk to my apartment. I’m tired, sleepy. I hope I fall asleep as soon as I go to bed—I won’t fight it.

  * * *

  Baby—how dare he call me baby? Who the hell does this guy suppose he is? I think back carefully to see whether I did anything that could have inspired him to call me “baby,” but I can’t identify anything. Everything was quite clear on my end: I told him I was going to pay for the whole night, and I made no promises. Even more concerning, though, is my reaction there at the end: Why did I say I’d call him? What was I thinking, implying that next time I’d sleep with him? I even apologized! Since when do you apologize to someone who works for you? I’ve never apologized to the workers at the factory! I must be going crazy.

  The day after the disastrous encounter with Javier, I went back to my psychiatrist, whom I hadn’t been seeing the last few months. I told him I was in a bad place, having trouble sleeping again after a period of improvement. Of course, I didn’t say a word about my run-in with the teacher, or renting male companions, or my private life.

  The poor psychiatrist is used to my silence at this point. He looks at me in frustration, as if to say, “If you aren’t going to talk about the main issue, why the hell do you bother coming here?” Obviously he doesn’t say that out loud, however much he thinks it, since I pay an astronomical amount for our sessions. To be fair, I should note that he tries his best to get me to open up; since he’s been unsuccessful, he merely gives me general advice. That day, after the misunderstanding with Javier, he made a basic and nonspecific suggestion:

  “Don’t punish yourself all the time, Irene. Allow yourself a bit of happiness—allow yourself that.”

  The problem with recommendations made blindly like that is that a person takes them and applies them according to her own reality, just like newspaper horoscopes.

  In any event, I’ve decided that, as part of allowing myself a bit of happiness, I’m going to call Javier. I’ll call him because I feel like seeing him again, and when I see him I’ll probably be happy, despite his gaffe. Maybe the psychiatrist’s one-size-fits-all suggestion isn’t so far off after all.

  * * *

  She called me directly for the first time, without Genoveva as a go-between. I told her no, I don’t want to set up a date with her. That kind of relationship hurts people in the end. Just because someone’s paying you doesn’t mean you can simply expose yourself to whatever squalls and storms they unleash on you. I’m have feelings. I’m not made of stone. I said it politely but firmly: “I’m sorry, but no. Maybe another time.” My curiosity about her is gradually dissipating. The woman is profoundly disturbed for reasons I do not understand. That’s enough for me—I have no wish to find out more.

  I talked to Iván without telling him about Irene’s exaggerated reaction. I asked him if he had any work for me.

  “Actually, I do!” he said. “There’s this foreign lady who wants to go out to dinner and a hotel on Friday. Unfortunately, I have a previous commitment. I hadn’t mentioned it to you in case you wouldn’t be interested.”

  “Is there a reason I wouldn’t be interested?”

  “The broad’s getting up there in years.”

  “How old?”

  “Her seventies are in the rearview mirror, but she pays well. I’d planned to tell her we should meet another day, but if you go, that would be even better.”

  “No problem.”

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  She turned out to be a charming Frenchwoman who spoke Spanish pretty well. She was impeccably arrayed: elegant and sophisticated, still attractive. And she was poised and cheerful. I liked her, and she liked me. We laughed a lot at dinner, and were passionate in bed. I gave her pleasure. It was all very simple and natural; I didn’t feel spurned as a monster. She thanked me for the evening before she left. She gave me two tender kisses on my cheeks. She told me she’d always remember me.

  Then it was time for her to pay me. I found it jarring to take the money right from her hand; I’d never done it that way before. She kindly asked me to count the bills to make sure she hadn’t made a mistake, which of course I refused to do.

  After that night, I felt better, even more reconciled to my job as an escort. Not all women despise the men they buy, I decided.

  * * *

  Mariano has worked out all of the choreography himself. And the man’s got a lot of skin in the game: in addition to the club décor, he bought our new outfits, which cost a shit-ton of money. He’s paying us for the rehearsals because they last so long, and he’s also doing advertising to make sure people find out we’re changing up the show.

  Personally, I’d rather dress as Zorro than as a Roman gladiator; Zorro had that heroic thing going on. But I don’t really care, since by the end, when we’re all in the buff, we’re dressed the same: like men, in all their glory. Javier’s happy as a clam. I’m happy he’s been put in the same dance number as me, just the two of us. He’s thrilled, not so much because he’s been promoted from a dancer in a group number to one of the stars, but because he gets to ditch the schoolboy uniform, which has always bugged him. His new outfit makes him feel more important. Though to be honest, given how skinny he is and with those huge clodhoppers of his, he looks more like a Roman soldier from a Holy Week procession in some tiny-ass village. But whatever, we’re all stuck with the looks God gave us.

  The number is fine, maybe a little complicated. We two gladiators come out and fight for a while. I’ve got a sword, and he has a spear. The complicated bit is when we have to remove each other’s clothes with the tips of our weapons. It’s a real nightmare, because if you don’t get the exact spot with the automatic zipper, the clothes don’t come off. Ultimately I win, pushing the teacher
to the ground and placing my sword against his throat like I’m going to polish him off. But suddenly Mariano appears, dressed as an emperor, and gives a thumbs-up, the signal that he’s sparing Javier’s life. To celebrate, everybody gets buck naked. I think this show’s going to be a raging success. We’ve certainly rehearsed enough.

  It’s opening night, and Irene and Genoveva are coming to see us. Apparently, I’m not supposed to tell the teacher because it’s a surprise. Genoveva told me things have been weird between him and Irene for a few days now. She calls him to go out, and he tells her to fuck off. I’d like to know what the hell happened. And Javier’s got some balls on him not to have mentioned it. It’s the least he could do! I’ll confront him about it, see if he snaps out of it. If the problem’s that the chick wants to make love, it’s no skin off his back to tell me. If it’s something dodgier than that—I don’t know what—maybe he could use some advice. But no, the guy’s not opening his trap. Well, fine, things’ll get messy for him tonight when we go out to eat and whatever happens after that. I haven’t said boo to him. I’m playing dumb. If he’s not telling, there’s no reason for me to know. I imagine the scene: “We wanted to surprise you on opening night for the new show.” I don’t think he’d get pissed off in front of them—he’s too polite. He’ll just endure it, weather the storm, and maybe that way I’ll find out what the hell is going on. It’s easy here to go from being the one calling the shots to being the low man on the totem pole—it’s a rough business.

  The new show was a hit! It just ended, and people were whooping and clapping like crazy. The teacher and I were really tight, sparring like ferocious beasts. I’d say we got the most applause of anybody in the club. We didn’t make a single mistake—it came off without a hitch. The other acts were great too. After all, we’re fucking professionals. Mariano looked happy, so happy that he told us afterward, “Nicely done, boys, you killed it,” and when he calls us “boys,” that means he’s as happy as a goddamn piranha in a river full of vacationers. He passed out hundred-euro notes to us as a tip. “Go have a drink to my health.” Absolutely—I want his health to last a hundred years, one for every euro! Actually, it’s a shame about the date with Genoveva, because there might be some hot babe in the audience, and since I’m on my motorcycle, I’m sure I wouldn’t have had any trouble hooking up. But no worries, there’ll be other opportunities, and with that gladiator costume highlighting my package and leaving my pecs bare, I’m going bag more chicks than George Clooney. I think I’m going to buy a new car—it’s time.