Run Catch Kiss

by Amy Sohn

  “What dating life?” smirked Zach.

  “The one that’s about to begin.”

  “I don’t get it,” said my dad. “They want you to go out with guys and write about them?”

  “Yeah.”

  My parents exchanged a worried glance across the table, and then my mom smiled perkily and said, “That’s certainly an . . . inventive idea.”

  “Can’t wait to see what you come up with,” said my dad.

  “Me neither,” said Zach.

  •

  When I got home I tried to write, but I couldn’t think of any good column ideas. So I called Sara. “I know this might not make you too happy, in light of our fight today,” I said, “but the City Week just offered me a regular column.” The line was quiet. “Hello?”

  “That’s incredible news,” she said. “We should go out and celebrate.”

  “So you’re not mad at me anymore?”

  “No. Just don’t ever write about me again without my permission. Otherwise I’ll stop speaking to you.”

  “Deal.”

  We met at BarF.

  “What’s the emphasis supposed to be on?” she said as I sat down next to her.

  “Sex.”

  “So you’re the staff whore.”

  “I—”

  “How much are you getting?”

  “Two hundred a week.”

  “That’s a lot less than a whore would get.” She glanced at the pool table in the back. “Do you see any potential . . . subjects? What about him?” A twentyish guy was coming out of the men’s room and heading past the pool table toward us. He was tall, with curly brown hair, and I knew I knew him from somewhere but I wasn’t sure where. As he came closer, I remembered. It was the audience member who had come up to me after Lolita: Rock On.

  I knew it was fate that he was here on this night. I had wanted him, and now we were crossing paths again, just when I needed subject matter. He sat down at the corner of the bar and I caught his eye.

  “Lolita,” he said.

  “Ariel, actually. Where’d you go that night? You disappeared.”

  “I had a friend waiting for me outside. He was in a really bad mood because his girlfriend had just broken up with him, so he wanted to leave right away. I tried to say good-bye to you but you were talking to someone else, so I figured I’d just slip out. I didn’t mean to be rude.” Suddenly I saw his eyes shift from me to Sara.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “This is my friend Sara. What’s your name, anyway?”

  “Michael.” He stood up and sat down on a stool next to Sara’s.

  “I know this sounds like a line,” she said, turning to him, “but you look really familiar.”

  “Yeah?” he said.

  “I think I saw you on the subway about two weeks ago. I was sitting across from you on the downtown Six? Around five-thirty? And I was staring at you because you look just like this guy I knew in college, who had four fingers. I was trying to look at your hand to see how many you had, but it was tucked under your arm and I couldn’t see. We both got off at Astor, and when you stood up, I saw that you had five fingers and that’s how I knew you weren’t him.”

  I had heard a lot of bad pickup stories in my life, but Sara had sunk to new lows. I couldn’t believe she would concoct a tale this far-fetched and completely unbelievable—all in the interest of hitting on someone.

  “Wait a second,” said Michael, nodding enthusiastically. “I think I do remember. You were wearing a long, dark skirt, right? And you have a tattoo on your hand of the number four.” She showed him her hand and grinned triumphantly. “I knew a guy with four fingers once,” he said. “His name was Richie Paducca. He lived down the block from me in Brookline.”

  “That’s the guy!” she screamed. “Richie Paducca! He went to Columbia!”

  “Yeah, he did go to Columbia. Blond hair, short? The missing finger was a birth defect?”

  “That’s him! This is too weird! I see you on the subway, think you’re someone else, and then it turns out you know the someone else I’m thinking about! This is unbelievable!”

  “It sure is,” I said.

  For the next twenty minutes the two of them kept chatting, intermittently throwing questions toward me in a feeble attempt to make me feel like I was part of the conversation. But it’s obvious when two people would rather be alone. It was like watching a dick and a pussy talking. I had met Michael first and Sara had stolen him right out of my hands. I’d been cock-blocked—and on my birthday to boot. I stood up, said good-bye, and took a cab home alone.

  •

  The next day at lunch, Sara gave me the scrumptious details about Michael’s stupendous pussy-licking skills, and I had to sit there and pretend to be interested. I wanted to tell her how pissed I was that she had cock-blocked me, but I didn’t feel like we knew each other well enough for me to have a right to be mad. It wasn’t like Michael was an ex-boyfriend of mine or anything. He was just a random hottie who happened to be into her more than me. But after a few minutes of acting like everything was fine, I found myself feeling so angry that I couldn’t look at her. As she went on about Michael, I stared straight ahead like a sullen teenager and gave monosyllabic responses. “What’s going on, Ariel?” she finally asked.

  “What do you mean?” I said.

  “You’re acting like a freak. Are you upset about something?”

  “No,” I said.

  But she knew something was up because she didn’t call once the whole weekend. And on Monday at lunch, when I got down to the lobby, which was where we usually met, she wasn’t waiting for me. I had lost my only friend, but I didn’t know how to get her back. I was too ashamed to tell her how I felt, too proud to admit to my jealousy.

  The worst part of our breakup was the timing. She had left me with no one to go out with—right when I was in need of fodder. I thought about going out alone, but it seemed too desperate. When two girls go out together, they look cool. But when a girl goes out by herself, she looks pathetic. So every night that week, while Sara was probably lying spread-eagled on her bed, I was watching TV, chugging Carlo Rossi, rereading Notes of a Dirty Old Man, and praying some guy from my past would call me out of the blue so I could have an interaction worthy of a column.

  On Wednesday at noon I went to the City Week box and took out a copy of the paper. On the bottom of the front page, nestled between the teasers Nadick’s Latest Bender, p. 18 and Hyman Tries Treatment for His OCD, p. 19, was the following:

  “I STOOD UP BY THE COUCH AND SLOWLY UNZIPPED THE FRONT of my nurse dress. I slid it off my shoulders and threw it on the floor, till I was standing in front of him in just my panty hose and Minimizer bra. I unsnapped my bra slowly, dropped it on the floor too, and ran my fingers up and down my breasts, like a stripper in a movie . . .” A new column by Ariel Steiner, “Run Catch Kiss,” debuts, p. 21.

  I could only imagine the look on my parents’ faces when they read that. But what was worse than the teaser was the cartoon. In the center of page twenty-one, above the caption “Comic Strip,” was a picture of the same pixieish girl from last week, pinching her nipples in front of a guy jerking off. The illustrator drew James’s penis superlong, pointing straight up into the air, with little accents around it so it looked like it was shaking, and she drew me with a mole above my lip, short dark hair, and two erect little boobs sticking straight out. This Tessa Tallner chick was even more perverted than I was.

  When I finished reading the story, I turned to “The Mail”:

  Ariel Steiner’s derision of uncircumcision (“I-Level,” 9/25) is yet another indication of the incredible bias we natural men have to face. Had Steiner railed out against Black guys, or Jewish guys, dozens of people would have written in to brand her a bigot. Why should there be a double standard when it comes to us? We foreskinned Franks, who count among us such luminaries as Elvis Presley, Tony Danza, and Charlton Heston, will no longer stand for such narrow-minded prejudice.

  JEFFREY THOMASON. Upp
er East Side

  Dear Ariel Steiner,

  Why settle for a blow-up boyfriend when you can have a real one? I’m well hung, women tell me I’m a good kisser, and you seem like just the kind of girl I’m looking to meet: an honest dirty talker, with a sense of humor too. My number’s in the phone book. And no, I’m not a psycho.

  JERRY LUPINO, Bronx

  As soon as I got back from lunch, I checked my machine to see if Lupino had called. Nada. It was a little disappointing. But I called the phone company and made my number unpublished anyway, hoping to thwart the next perv’s wicked plans.

  Later that afternoon a heavy breather did call. My dad. “Should I show this one to mom?” he asked. “I know she’s going to ask me to.” The City Week was available only in Manhattan, and my mom’s office was in Brooklyn Heights, around the corner from my parents’ building. She ran her own business, selling children’s videos mail-order to schools and libraries.

  “Maybe you shouldn’t,” I said.

  “I’m having a hard time here,” he said. “The illustration was unsettling enough, but it was the subtitle above the column that got to me the most. I don’t know if I want to think of what I read as a true confession.”

  “I thought you said the truth quotient was my business and no one else’s.”

  “I lied. Are you making stuff up or aren’t you? How can they call it true if it’s not?”

  “Maybe you shouldn’t read the column at all. I mean, if it makes you so uncomfortable—”

  “I can’t stop reading it! I don’t have that much self-restraint!”

  “Well, then please do me one favor: don’t talk to me about what you read and what you haven’t. Because maybe I don’t want to know . . . how much you know.”

  “That’s an interesting point you make. There’s an element of your own shame here that I hadn’t even considered. I was just thinking about my shame, and mom’s. I think you’ve made a perfectly fair request, and I’ll do my best to honor it.” I wasn’t sure I believed him.

  •

  For the next few weeks, as Sara and I kept up our mutual silent treatment, I was forced to keep mining my past. I knew my columns were supposed to be true confessions, but Jensen and Turner never said anything about chronological accuracy. So my next three were about Josh (“Great Somethings”), Jason, the ISO guy (“Share the Wealth”), and Tell, the cross-dressing punk (“Glen or Glenda”). I made it out like each affair had lasted only a week, and for the last two I changed the names of streets and restaurants so it sounded like the stories had happened in New York, not Providence. The illustrations were: me standing naked, staring at a naked guy with sideburns and an erect penis; me getting eaten out in a classroom with a poster of Marx in the background; and me blowing a guy who was wearing a wig.

  Every Monday night when I got home from work there would be an E-mail from Turner: “Dear Traci Lords—Keep it up. If you know what I mean,” or, “You are one sick chick—and I mean that as the highest compliment.” Evidently my wool pulling was working. In Turner’s mind I was a hot, swinging single girl. He had no idea what a lame-ass homebody I really was.

  The readers’ responses were just as strong as Turner’s, but unfortunately, in both directions:

  I love you, Ariel Steiner. You get me off every week, with grace and style. I wish the paper printed a picture of you so I could see what you look like.

  ERNIE LAYNE. Far Rockaway

  P.S. Why aren’t you listed?

  If Ariel Steiner came over to my house and did a striptease, I wouldn’t blow her off. I’d propose.

  FREDDIE ASSISI, Chelsea

  Thank you. Ariel Steiner. How useful it is to know that when I want to spill some seed, I no longer have to spring five bucks for a Hustler. I can just pick up a free copy of the Week and use it for the same purpose. And because it’s on newsprint, it happens to make excellent toilet paper as well.

  NATHAN SHERMAN, Forest Hills

  Who did Ariel Steiner sleep with to get her column?

  LINDA SALLE, Upper West Side

  When I read that last letter, I had to close the paper and take a few deep breaths. I had known City Week readers wrote the most venomous letters in town; I just hadn’t been prepared for them to whack me so hard and so soon. But at the same time, the invective felt oddly familiar. While I had never been ridiculed in print before, the experience of being humiliated before an audience of thousands was not exactly new for me.

  In the fall of ninth grade, my drama teacher, Mrs. Hopper, announced to our class that there was an Arts Day coming up, where any interested students could act or sing or dance in front of the entire school. She had a book of famous movie scenes on her desk and said we could borrow it if we wanted to. I leafed through it on the subway and found a scene from The Graduate. It was the one where Benjamin drives Mrs. Robinson home from the party, she insists that he come into the house with her, and then seduces him.

  I had seen the movie a few months before, at a girlfriend’s house, and as I watched Anne Bancroft flick her long cigarettes and clink ice cubes in her bourbon, I’d been struck with monumental awe. I wanted to be just like Mrs. Robinson when I grew up: husky voiced, poised, leggy, and nicotine addicted. An alcoholic, neurotic seductress, the ultimate man manipulator, with a heart as sharp as her nails.

  There was a cute, obnoxious kid in my class named Nate who I’d had a crush on for quite some time. He was known for his loud mouth and quick wit. The day after I read the scene, I approached him at recess and asked if he had ever seen The Graduate. “Only about four hundred times,” he said. “It’s my all-time favorite movie. Why?”

  “Well, there’s this Arts Day coming up next month, and I was wondering if you’d want to do a scene from it with me.”

  “Me? Play Benjamin? That’s my life dream. I’d be honored.”

  For the next three weeks we rehearsed in the hallways every day after school. Nate was a natural and he already knew most of the lines because he’d seen the film so many times. When we began our work on the last page, though, we hit a brick wall. The movie version of the scene ends like this: Benjamin stands in Mrs. Robinson’s daughter Elaine’s room, looking up at a portrait on the wall. Mrs. Robinson enters naked and locks the door behind her. He sees her reflection in the glass of Elaine’s picture, then just as she tells him, “I find you very attractive,” he hears Mr. Robinson’s car pulling into the driveway, frantically unlocks the door, and runs down the stairs.

  Since there was no way I was going to walk onstage naked, Nate suggested an alternate ending. In the final, climactic moment, I could step behind a shoulder-high flat, remove my dress (under which I’d be wearing a strapless bra), and pull him down behind the flat on the last line. I loved the idea. We tried it out that day and rehearsed it over and over again until we were thrilled with the effect.

  The afternoon of the performance, Nate and I paced in the hallway outside the auditorium. Through the door, we watched the house lights dim and the stage lights come up, and then we entered through the center aisle, like we were coming up the driveway of the house. Suddenly I was transformed into Anne Bancroft. It didn’t matter that my Mrs. Robinson dress was torn, ill fitting, and found in a bin of rags in the back of the auditorium. I was hoarse and leggy, and the school was watching.

  When we got to the part where I stepped behind the flat and took off the dress, a murmur passed through the audience. I had these puppies in the palm of my hand. “I find you very attractive,” I cooed, and pulled Nate down behind the flat, waiting for thunderous applause. None came. The kids didn’t know it was over. “What should we do?” whispered Nate.

  “Wait. They’ll figure it out eventually.”

  They didn’t. Still utter silence. It was painful. “It’s over!” he shouted, but it was a large auditorium and nobody heard him. “This is ridiculous,” he said. “I’m leaving.”

  “No, don’t,” I said, but he didn’t listen. He stood up abruptly, so abruptly that he knocked over the f
lat. Suddenly I found myself trembling, half nude and squatting, in stockings and a bargain-basement bra, in front of twelve hundred of my closest friends. I looked out in terror and watched the audience break into a villainous roar, a roar of pure ridicule, so unabashedly evil it was heartbreaking. I could see it pass like a wave from the front row all the way up to the balcony, slowly but surely, until every single kid was guffawing at me, openmouthed.

  I got the joke. The tables had been turned. The seductress was naked and ashamed, and the underdog had emerged the victor. I grabbed my dress and covered my front with it desperately, then sidestepped off the stage into the wings, my knees weak, my world caving in before me.

  When I cried to my mother that night about what had happened, she said, “Don’t worry. They’ll forget about it within a few days.” But I knew that even if the ridicule only lasted a week, it was the worst possible week for it to happen. The day after Arts Day was the official starting date of the campaign for school government office. I was running for correspondence vice president, the morning-announcements person, and I’d already gotten a thousand pencils embossed with ARIEL STEINER FOR CORRESPONDENCE VP.

  I arrived at school the next morning trying to make like nothing had happened, handed the pencils out to my homeroom classmates, and said, “I hope you vote for me.” The boys took them, leered at me, and said things like “Of course I’ll vote for you. Out of all the candidates, you’re the only one who’s exposed her agenda.” The jokes were stupid and obvious, but they got me in the gut. Every single person who took a pencil made a jab about my visibility.

  When I stood up on the auditorium stage again, a week later, to make my campaign speech, I heard a male voice in the balcony yell, “Hey, perky!” I knew he wasn’t referring to my personality. But I bit my lip, dove into my oratory, and wound up winning the election. Not by a landslide, but by enough for me to wonder if maybe the Graduate scene had been partially responsible for my victory.