by Amy Sohn
“In the middle of the movie he started biting my ear and lip. ‘Kiss me, Ariel, kiss me,’ he said. ‘I want you to kiss me. Turn to me and kiss me, baby. Come on, kiss me.’ I did, but Roberto was a biter and biters really turn me off. I kept closing my mouth to hint that I liked to be kissed soft and sweet, instead of hard and rough, but he kept gnawing the tip of my tongue.”
Right on the word tongue I saw someone come through the curtain into the theater, and as soon as I saw him a current shot straight from my heart to my hole. He was in his early thirties, medium height, in a hip-length leather jacket, and he had mussed yellow hair and Buddy Holly glasses. His glasses and strut made it clear he thought he was hot shit on a silver platter. It’s always the cockiest guys who nerd themselves down because nerding yourself down is a way of saying, I’m so hot I can dress like a dork and women will still find me good looking. I was not turned off by his hotshitism, though. No indeed. I have always been a sucker for guys who think they’re hot shit because I want to be the one woman to turn them into the weak fucks they really are.
He took a seat in the front row of the audience, and I struggled for a few seconds to find my place in the story.
“Then Roberto put his hand on my leg and up my skirt and rubbed my underpants. He slid his fingers under the panties and stuck one inside. I closed my eyes, and when I opened them I saw Wallace Shawn on the screen, lisping his way through a mournful monologue. I wondered if I was the only one watching Wallace Shawn who had a finger up her crack.”
I glanced at Buddy Holly. He was smiling.
“When the movie was over we walked down the street holding hands. We headed up Sixth Avenue to Balducci’s and he bought me jelly beans and cheese. I liked him buying me things. It didn’t matter that he was leaving, a biter, and a highly unstable choice in the long run. It was a warm pleasure to walk down the street on the arm of a man who knew the importance of a nice wool coat, who had good teeth, clear skin, and thick hair. Who smelled like old Aramis, called me ‘baby,’ and walked briskly with his arm linked in mine. My life was like a Charlie perfume ad. With a very sick twist.”
I looked up. “That’s it.”
It was quiet. One of the Push-Ups glared at me and lit a cigarette. Gene and Gordon grinned uncomfortably, and Buddy Holly crossed his legs.
“Excellent, Ariel, excellent,” said Gordon. “There’s some real good stuff there. Real good stuff.”
“I agree,” said Gene. “You’ve got some vivid, potent material there. Your writing is so firm, and stark, and tight. I think she should read the other story, Gordon. What do you think?”
“I think so too,” said Gordon. “This is James Delaney, everyone. The assistant director. Ariel’s just finished reading a tantalizing tale about an experience with an older man, James.”
“I’m sorry I came late,” said James.
•
“Have you copyrighted your stories?” he asked, as I packed them into my bag. It was the end of rehearsal and everyone had left the theater except us.
“No, I just wrote them a few nights ago, for the show. Why?”
“You might want to consider it, in case you ever submit them somewhere. There’s a lot of theft in literary magazines these days. You could submit something somewhere, have it rejected by an editorial assistant, then see it pop up under her name in another publication months later. Happens all the time.”
“Jeez,” I said innocently. “I had no idea that was so common. You wouldn’t happen to have the number for the Copyright Office, would you?”
“As a matter of fact, I do. Not with me, but at home.”
“Maybe you could . . . give me your number, then. And I could call you for the number of the office.”
As he started to reach for the Pilot V5 Extra Fine pen protruding from his shirt pocket, my sexual frustration balled up into a fist and punched me in the face. I shot my hand out and grabbed the pen myself, letting my fingers rest against his chest for a second as I pulled. I glanced at him quickly to see his reaction. He looked half intrigued, half afraid. Maybe writing those stories had been a wiser move than I knew.
•
That night under the covers, I pretended my vagina was the trash compactor in Star Wars and James was this tiny Han Solo trapped inside me. The hotter I got, the faster my walls began to close and the harder he had to struggle to get out. After a few minutes he found this pole in there and desperately tried to pry me open with it, but it was to no avail. Each move he made only intensified my arousal and crushed him further. I was going to suffocate that little fucker with brute Chewbacca strength. As I finally began to come, I imagined myself shooting his miniature carcass out of me across the room. As soon as he landed he began to grow to human size—still dressed as Han Solo, except in Buddy Holly glasses. He climbed on top of me, fucked me slowly and expertly, collapsed with a sigh, and hummed “Everyday” softly into my ear until I fell asleep.
•
The next morning at work, I couldn’t stop thinking about James. I kept getting this image of him walking into the theater, and each time I got it, I’d wetten and sweat. When a guy makes you wetten and sweat each time you think of him, it kind of makes you want to call him. So I left a message on his machine saying I was calling for the number of the Copyright Office. A little while later he called back.
“Good morning, Ashley Ginsburg’s office, Ariel Steiner speaking. How may I assist you?”
“Mmmm,” he said. “You have such a sexy phone voice.”
I loved that compliment. My voice has always been the attribute I’m most proud of. The only part of my job I enjoyed was answering the phone, since it let me put on a little show for each caller. I always tried to cultivate a pleasant, welcoming, and perfectly well modulated tone.
“I’m glad you think so,” I said. “I work hard on it. I think good phone manners are essential to establishing the credibility of a place of work. Are you calling to give me the Copyright number?”
“Yes. But I also . . . had another agenda. I wanted to know if you’d like to get a drink with me tomorrow night, since we have rehearsal off.”
I wrote “YES!!!!!!” in huge letters on my blotter.
“That sounds fine,” I said.
“Good. Let’s go to Corner Bar, at West Fourth and West Eleventh. At ten, say. And I want you to bring those stories.”
“Why?”
“Because as I watched you read last night, I could see that you possessed something . . . something highly alluring. If you got onstage and performed those stories for an audience of men, I am certain that you would electrify. I would just love to . . . present you. To be a part of you turning men on. To assist with that task.” He was quiet. All I could hear was his heavy breath. I wondered if he had something in his hand.
“What about women, though? Would women be allowed in the theater?”
“Yes. The women would be jealous once they saw how the men were responding to you. They would come on to their men that night harder than ever and the men would make love to them thinking of you. The sex would be so good that the women would feel grateful to you. You have this incredible erotic energy, which should be put onstage for other people to watch. You have something powerful and hot and big.”
There was something bizarre about James’s vision, but he thought I was sexy and that flattered me. Besides, maybe he was on to something with this one-woman-show idea. We could tour the globe together and wow crowds from Houston to Hamburg. Critics would dub me the Jewish Madonna, the thinking girl’s Robin Byrd, the straight Holly Hughes. After a few months on the road James would fall in love with my brilliance and propose. I’d insist that he convert to Judaism, we’d get hitched in Temple Emanu-El before a crowd of thousands and immediately have a litter of slightly off-balance children.
I’d drop the smut tales and start doing performance art about the joys of motherhood, and it would be even more provocative than before. Everyone who watched me would suddenly want to become parents, and i
t would set off a worldwide population explosion that would go down in history as the Steiner Effect.
“I should go,” said James.
“OK,” I said.
“I’m looking forward to tomorrow. I think it will be a highly entertaining evening, for both of us.”
“I hope so.”
•
That night at rehearsal, Gene played a composition he’d written on his French horn, entitled “Lovely Lolita,” and James read a long, rambling poem about a deer hunter. It was boring and pretentious and made me lose some artistic respect for him, but it didn’t diminish my lust. At the end of the night I waved good-bye to him casually so no one would know there was something budding between us.
After work the next day I stopped in the Village to browse for shoes. I was passing by Patricia Field, this transvestite store on Eighth Street, when in the center of the window I spotted a long, shiny black flip wig with the hair curled up at the ends. I went inside. “Where are the wigs?” I asked the hulking she-man behind the counter.
“Upstairs,” she said in a German accent that sounded fabricated. At the top of the stairs was a counter with a row of wigs behind it. A tall, severe-looking queen was fitting a girl my age with the very wig I wanted. It didn’t look too good on her. She had pale skin and small features and it was too big for her face. I felt sure it would look better on me because I have large features and a large head. The girl shook her head no, the queen took off the wig, and I stepped up to the counter.
“Excuse me,” I said. “How much is that one?”
“A hundred,” she said, primping it up.
There was no way in hell I could afford it. But I had to see it on me. I knew she would probably hate me for trying on something I wasn’t planning to buy, but I didn’t care. Her job frustration was her problem, not mine. “I’d like to put it on.”
I sat down in the swivel chair behind the counter. She turned me so my back was to the mirror, fitted me with the wig, then spun me around so I could see my reflection.
Suddenly I was a raven-haired knockout. My skin looked visibly pinker. Usually it looks green because of my Russian Jewish ancestry. My mother’s always called it olive, but it’s really closer to chartreuse. My eyes looked bright and alive and my torso seemed slimmer.
“You look like Mary Richards,” said the queen.
“Who’s that?”
“Oh, honey. You never saw The Mary Tyler Moore Show?”
“It was kind of before my time,” I said, blushing. “But thanks anyway. I’m glad I look like her.”
She fluffed the wig and made the ends curl out more dramatically. I ran my fingers through the hair as if it were my own, but the gesture looked distinctly false in the mirror. I tried again, and the second time it looked more natural.
I couldn’t stop looking at the new me. I loved her. I felt gorgeous and available and on top of the world. Then I remembered the price. “You can take it off now,” I said. She sneered, removed it, and put it back on the dummy head. I trudged down the stairs without looking back.
When I got outside I noticed a bank machine across the street. Suddenly I heard Robin Williams’s voice in my head saying, “Carpe diem.” The only reason I saw Dead Poets Society was for the young hottie quotient, but that line has always rung truer than true. I looked at the display wig in the window, then back across the street at the cash machine, and, well, I carped that diem.
The queen was visibly delighted when I told her I’d take it. I knew she’d probably get a handsome commission. She trimmed the ends a bit, said, “If you tweeze your brows it’ll look even better,” and started to put it in a plastic bag.
“No,” I said. “I’ll wear it.”
As soon as I got out on the street, I felt like a new woman. Men turned and stared. I didn’t know if they were staring because they thought I was hot or because they knew it was a wig, but it didn’t really matter. They were looking.
•
When I got home from the store I raced to my room and opened my closet. There was no doubt in my mind that I should wear the wig on the date, because it seemed like just the sort of thing James would enjoy. But I needed a dress to go with it: something saucy yet simultaneously demure. Cute hot, not slut hot. I combed through my clothes until my eyes fell upon a bright white number.
It was the nurse dress I’d bought junior year for Halloween at the Providence Salvation Army, also known as the fashion locus of the Western world. I had found it in the uniforms section, and when I got back to my dorm I hemmed it to ass length and went to a party. I didn’t stop getting compliments the whole night. I felt like a porno movie come to life. And James was a highly pornographic man.
After dinner I showered, tweezed my eyebrows, bleached my mustache, and put on some lipstick, the wig, the dress, and my brown platform heels. I slipped on a boiled-wool car coat, put the stories in a fake-alligator-leather lunch-box handbag, and went to the front door. My mom came out of the kitchen. “What did you do to your hair?”
“It’s a wig,” I said.
“Leo! Zach! You gotta see this!”
My dad and Zach emerged from Zach’s room, where they’d been surfing the Net.
“Oh, dear God,” said my dad.
“It’s not real!” said my mom. “It’s a wig!”
“You look like one of those Hasidic women,” said Zach.
“I’m trying to look like Mary Richards.”
“You don’t look like Mary!” laughed my dad. “You look more like one of the daughters in Fiddler on the Roof. How ya doing, Chava? Why aren’t your legs covered?” My mom laughed and so did Zach, and then the three of them broke into the chorus of “Sunrise, Sunset.”
“Leave me alone!” I snapped, went out the door, and slammed it behind me. I felt a little guilty for being such a bitch, but it was such a mood killer to be dressed like a looker and have to deal with a naggy family.
•
When I got out of the subway I stopped at a newsstand and bought a pack of American Spirit cigarettes, the natural, nonadditive kind. I’ve always thought their motto should be “They’ll kill you, but slowly.” I don’t really like smoking but I like the way I look smoking. I buy cigarettes whenever I want to feel sexy or jaded, then smoke one or two and throw the rest of the pack out.
I lit up, walked to the bar, and cupped my hands against the window to see if I could spot James. He was sitting right at the end of the bar, sipping a glass of beer. I pushed the door open and posed in the doorway, the cigarette hand poised against the jamb, the other on my hip. I looked straight at him and said, “I’m not a smoker, but I play one on TV.” He lifted his head and smiled. So did some of the other patrons. That was a little embarrassing, but I knew I had to own the moment.
I approached him in the sultriest strut I could muster, trying not to stumble in my platform heels, feeling glad I’d worn control-top panty hose.
“That’s a gorgeous wig,” he said.
“How’d you know it was a wig?”
“It’s crooked. I can see your hairline.” I pulled it down. “What would you like to drink?”
I was about to say a Bass, but I thought it might sound unfeminine, so instead I said, “How about a whiskey sour?” I’d never had one before but it seemed like just the kind of drink a swinging single woman might order.
He beckoned the bartender over. “Another Bass please, and a whiskey sour.”
“I don’t have any sour mix,” said the bartender a bit gruffly, looking at me. “I can give you whiskey, lemon juice, and sugar.” Suddenly I realized my faux pas: a whiskey sour was a bourgeois drink—and this was not a bourgeois bar. There was sawdust on the floor and a few rickety tables in the back, and all the other patrons were haggard old men.
“Just make it two Basses,” I mumbled.
The bartender brought the beers and James and I went to a table in the back. “Can I help you with your coat?” he asked.
“Sure. That’s sweet of you.”
�
�It’s not as altruistic as you think,” he said, easing it off my shoulders. “Do you know where the tradition of men helping women with their coats comes from?”
“No.”
“From men wanting to rub against women’s rears. It’s a classic masking of an ageless urge.” I waited for him to press himself against me but he just pulled the coat off and sat down across from me.
“Did you bring the stories?” he said.
“Yes.”
“Why don’t you read me one?”
I reached for my handbag and took out “Shooting Wad and Movies.” He came across the table and sat down next to me.
“Why did you move?” I asked.
“Because I want to watch you from the side. That way, when you look at me, you’ll have to peer over your shoulder. I find it very sexy when a woman peers over her shoulder at me. Did you ever notice how women in fashion advertisements are posed that way?”
“No.”
“It’s because that’s the mammalian come-hither look, from the days we were four-legged creatures and did it from behind.” James was revealing himself to be severely deranged, but I’m never intrigued unless the guy’s somewhat deranged.
I looked down at the papers.
“I first met Mitchell Sorensen on the set of an NYU graduate film we had both been cast in. It was about a young girl’s budding friendship with the school janitor.”
As I continued to read, James watched me closely. If I lifted my hand to brush the wig from my face, he stared at my hand. If I licked my lips because my mouth was getting dry, he stared at my tongue. He watched me like watching me was a cottage industry.
When I finished the story, he said, “Now, why don’t you take out the other one?”
“But you heard it at rehearsal,” I said. “Why do you want to hear it again?”
“It’ll help me get performance ideas.”