Run Catch Kiss

by Amy Sohn

  “Was it a nice place?”

  I turned to him abruptly. “What does that matter?”

  “I’m just trying to imagine it.”

  “It looked like any other East Village studio! It had a dimmer! The bathroom had no sink!”

  “OK!”

  “So as soon as we walked in, we started kissing, really violently and passionately. All I wanted was to rip his clothes off and jump his bones. We raced over to his futon and—”

  He opened his eyes. “I thought you listened to Blood on the Tracks first.”

  “We did. I mean, his stereo was right next to his bed. He put on Blood on the Tracks and then we got into the bed. Then he went down on me—”

  “You didn’t write about that.”

  Uh oh. I was forgetting my own details. “No. I didn’t. But he did go down on me.”

  “Oh.”

  “Does that bother you?”

  “A little. I mean, that’s so much more intimate than just sex.”

  “Should I stop?”

  “No. I need to do this. Tell me about him going down on you.”

  He closed his eyes again. I sighed. “It was really good. He licked away at me so diligently and terrifically that I came within like three minutes . . .”

  Again the blanket stilled. He turned to me. “Three minutes? You never come that quickly when I do it.”

  “Did I say three? I meant thirty.”

  “Oh.”

  “So, after I came, he put on a condom and slid it into me, and it wound up being this incredibly easy and simple procedure? Because of how ready I was? How wet I was from just having come?” The blanket was vibrating more quickly now. “He pushed my thighs all the way up over my head and I almost coughed on his cock he put it in so deep.”

  “Oh God, Ar . . .”

  I looked over at him, his eyes shut, his face contorted, the blanket trembling violently, and I decided the situation had gotten just a little too weird. My own boyfriend was about to jizz over an infidelity that didn’t even take place. What was next? Would this cheating stuff become a regular part of our dirty talk? Would I have to keep inventing lurid new details just to keep exciting him? Would it get to the point where he suggested the four of us get it on together, for therapeutic reasons? I knew it probably wasn’t the best timing to spring the truth on him when he was three seconds away from spooging his brains out, but somehow I just couldn’t let the game go on.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I can’t do this anymore.”

  The blanket stopped moving. He glared at me. “What do you mean?”

  “I never had sex with Ben. I didn’t even kiss him. And I didn’t kiss Jason either. It was all part of this stupid plan.”

  His eyes grew wide as his dick. “What are you talking about?”

  “The moment I said, ‘I love you,’ and you didn’t say it back, I knew you’d never catch up with my devotion. I’d always love you more. And I hated it. Because I wanted you to be as passionate about me as I was about you. So I made up the kiss to make you jealous, and then when you said you kissed Laura, I had to come up with something better, so I wrote that I fucked Ben. Sara thinks I should dump you. She says I’m a sucker for staying with you.”

  “You’re not a sucker.”

  “Yes, I am. I should hate you for what you did.”

  “Didn’t do.”

  “What?”

  “Laura’s a lesbian. She’s been living with her girlfriend for two and a half years.”

  Holy Moses. “You mean you didn’t kiss her, either?”

  “No! I only said I kissed her to get back at you because I was so hurt that you kissed Jason! And then when I read ‘Den of Len,’ I decided to tell you I fucked her. Because unless I made you think I cheated on you too, you would always have more power over me.”

  “I thought you didn’t believe in those kinds of games!”

  “In principle I don’t, but in practice it’s a totally different matter.”

  I looked at him for a second, trying to take it all in, and then I had a terrifying thought. What if even this wasn’t the truth? What if he was such a skilled manipulator that he’d changed his story when I changed mine, because he was too afraid I’d dump him for fucking Laura? What if they really had done it and this was nothing more than another web of lies?

  “Wait a minute,” I said. “How do I know you’re telling the truth now?”

  “Do you really think I could have made up a story this twisted?”

  “People do it all the time! I should know!”

  “I swear nothing happened!”

  “Why should I believe you?”

  “You could call Laura up and ask her if she’s gay. It’ll be a little embarrassing to have to explain why you need to know, but you could do it.”

  I looked at him hard. I didn’t see any deception in his eyes. “That’s OK,” I said. “I don’t want to.”

  He smiled and pulled me toward him, and down onto the bed, and smooched me like it was our last night together on the eve of world war. It was a different kind of kiss than any we’d had before, more intense than that first night together, even. He didn’t feel closed off. He felt like he was with me, completely. Suddenly I tasted something salty in my mouth. At first I thought it was coming from me, but then I realized I wasn’t crying.

  “Are you OK?” I said.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Just incredibly relieved. I’m glad you didn’t cheat on me. That column made me so jealous.”

  “It did?”

  “It made me want to punch him in the face.”

  “It did?” I asked gleefully.

  “Yeah. I couldn’t stand the thought of losing you. Of you being with anyone but me. I adore you. I . . .”

  “What? What? You what?”

  “I . . .” He took a deep breath. “I . . . yuv you.”

  “Do you have something caught in your mouth?”

  “No. It’s just easier for me to say it in baby talk, for some reason.”

  It wasn’t exactly the romance movie of the decade, but it was a start. He’d said it with a severe speech impediment, but he’d said it. We kissed again and he hugged me so hard I could feel a few vertebrae crack. I stared at him and for the first time I didn’t see any fear in his eyes. I just saw love. I mean yuv. And it wasn’t a wild, reckless love that was there only because I’d tricked him. It was an open, real love that was there because he’d sensed what it would be like not to have me, and it had made him afraid. He loved me for me, not for my lies.

  I’d been waiting years for the moment when I’d see that look in a pair of male peepers, but now that it was finally happening, I was afraid a genie would tap me on the shoulder and tell me this was another girl’s life; we’d gotten switched at the wish center and I’d gotten hers instead of mine. It didn’t happen, though. No matter how hard I looked, the love didn’t disappear. I started to cry, and as soon as I stopped, he started again. “It’s like crying Ping-Pong,” he said.

  In the romance movie of the decade, that probably would have been the moment where we made perfect, soft-lit, missionary love as a really nauseating Phil Collins song swelled in the background. But even though Adam probably had a wicked case of blue balls from his interrupted stroke session, he didn’t suggest it, and neither did I. We just lay there holding each other for a long time, until finally we fell asleep.

  10

  IN THE MORNING, we went to The Fall. We kept putting down our newspapers to smooch and nuzzle, like every couple in the café I had envied from afar. But once, midkiss, I farted, and Adam walked to a table across the room, and I realized we’d never be completely like those other couples.

  When I got home from the café there was a message on my machine from Turner. “Call me as soon as possible,” he said. “I’m in the office.”

  I dialed. “Can you come over right away?” he said.

  “Sure. What’s this about?”

  “I’d rather discuss it with you in person.” No go
od news has ever come after those eight words.

  When I got to Turner’s office, he led me down the hall into Jensen’s. We sat down on the couch across from Jensen. Both of his eyes seemed crossed now.

  “I received a rather disturbing call at home this morning,” he said. “From a Mr. Richard Sand. Ben Weinstein’s lawyer. Weinstein claims your last column was partially fabricated. He says that although you did meet at a party, nothing sexual actually transpired. In fact, he has a live-in girlfriend, who was away the weekend you met him. The girlfriend came back yesterday, read your column, figured out it was him because of the Epcot Center T-shirt and the Paris, Texas reference, and hit the roof. Ben tried to tell her it was made up, but she wouldn’t believe him. So he called his dad. Emerson Weinstein, the bond trader. His dad hired Sand and they’re threatening to sue us for libel unless we print a retraction. What’s going on?”

  I should have known it was a mistake to mess with that conniving little shit. I couldn’t believe I’d been duped so hard. You couldn’t even trust your own boy toy to be upfront with you. But there was nothing I could do about it now, except ‘fess up. I looked from Jensen to Turner slowly, then sighed and told them the boring true story: the party, the bar, the thumb sucking, Ben’s invitation, my refusal, and the cab ride home. Their heads drooped lower and lower as I went on.

  “Why did you do this?” asked Turner when I finished.

  “I have a perfectly reasonable explanation!” I shouted.

  “We’d love to hear it.”

  “I was feeling incredibly unsure of Adam’s devotion, and I decided I had to do something that would make him jealous! But I couldn’t bring myself to actually cheat on him, so I wrote that I did!”

  “That’s your explanation?” sputtered Jensen.

  “Yes.”

  “Do you have any idea what’s at stake because of your sophomoric power games? You could shut down the paper!”

  “I—”

  “What about your other columns? Have you lied in any of them?” asked Turner.

  “I didn’t lie, per se. I . . . heightened, maybe.”

  “Didn’t we make it clear when you started the column that you had to tell the truth?”

  “Don’t tell me you guys really thought everything I wrote was true! Nobody’s that depraved!”

  “We thought you were!” shouted Jensen. “Why do you think we hired you?”

  “I—”

  “How much ‘heightening’ have you done since you started?”

  Suddenly I started to panic. Maybe it was best to remain silent. That’s what the perps always did on cop shows, and this was beginning to feel like an interrogation scene. Jensen was the bad cop and Turner was the good one.

  “I don’t know if I should say,” I said.

  “You’ll only make things more difficult if you don’t cooperate,” said Jensen. I waited for him to grab me by the hair and slam my head down on the desk.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, “but that’s all I’d care to share.”

  “Fine,” said Jensen, rising and twitching. “You’re fired.”

  For the first time in twenty-two years, I couldn’t speak. I nodded blankly, trying to keep my face from exploding, and walked out toward the elevators.

  As soon as I got down to the lobby, I started bawling. The only good thing that had ever come out of my twisted existence had been yanked away from me—all because of Ben Weinstein’s jealous whore of a girlfriend. It didn’t make sense. His affection had seemed so genuine. He’d even given me his phone number. I pulled out the matchbook, raced down the street to a pay phone, and dialed. A voice mail came on. “You’ve reached Ben Weinstein,” he said. “I’m either away from my desk or on another call, but leave a message and I’ll get back to you.” He’d given me his work number, for chrissake! What a sneaky, manipulative asshole! Thank God I hadn’t shtupped him!

  I headed slowly down Broadway toward the F stop, and when I got on the train, I saw this girl my age, wearing a bike messenger bag slung over her shoulder, reading the Week. I moved next to her to get a better look. She was reading “Den of Len.” Her mouth was slightly parted, and she had this look of half terror, half amusement on her face.

  I wanted to sling her over my shoulder and cart her into Jensen’s office so he could see what a huge mistake he was making. Didn’t he realize how many readers he was about to lose? I had made people laugh! I had made them spurt! Without me, all the city’s young hipsters would have to reach into the dusty shoe boxes underneath their beds and take out their long-abandoned smut sources. Girls would brush off their tattered copies of Anaïs Nin’s Little Birds, Judy Blume’s Forever . . . , and My Secret Garden, and the boys would return to their Hustlers and Penthouses. The guys who wiped their asses with my columns would have to go around crusty, and the ones who used the Week as a spooge target would have to go back to staining their walls.

  The city would collectively grow more tense and miserable, couples would return to the lousy sex they were having pre–“Run Catch Kiss” because the men could no longer fantasize about me while they were fucking their girlfriends, and pervs would go back to harassing women instead of going home to read my column. Muggers would grow restless and violent, the crime rate would soar, and the entire town would become the inferno it was before I came along. It was going to get Hobbesian.

  When I got home, I called Adam. “That’s crazy!” he said. “Don’t they realize that all their columnists embellish?”

  “I guess not.”

  “But you’re—”

  “The greatest stroke writer since Miller. I know.”

  “I was going to say, ‘One of the top reasons people read the paper.’”

  “Oh”.

  “Maybe this isn’t the worst thing in the world. This shift could be good for you. Madonna reinvents herself every few years. Now you have a chance to.”

  “What am I supposed to reinvent myself as? A freelance perjurer?”

  “You can do anything you want. Just wait. I have a feeling everything’s going to work out for the better.”

  I didn’t.

  After we hung up, I called my parents in the country. My dad answered and I told him the news. “I have to tell you,” he said, “as angry as I am at those muckrakers, I’d be lying if I didn’t admit to a faint sense of relief.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “For one thing, I’m thrilled you haven’t cheated on Adam. Mom and I were afraid you’d wrecked the entire relationship. For another, this is great for us. Larry Stanley won’t bother me anymore, Mom can start going to Women’s League for Israel meetings again, and Zach’s friends will stop calling him slutbrother.”

  “It’s nice to know you support me when I’m down.”

  “I don’t think you’ll have to struggle to get other employment. You’ve got a remarkable ability to fuse trash and lies. Have you considered a career in advertising?”

  I dialed Sara next. “I already know,” she said.

  “How?”

  “Roy Cohn Junior just called. He asked me to give him the real names of all the guys you’ve written about so he can contact them.”

  “Did you?”

  “No. I said, ‘Suck my dick. If you’re going to burn her at the stake, it’ll have to be without my help.’”

  “You told him to suck your—”

  “No. I said the other part, though.”

  “What do you think he’s gonna do?”

  “He’s probably going to go to each bar you’ve mentioned and interrogate the regulars until he deciphers your pseudonyms. Which won’t be too difficult.”

  “You really think he’d stoop that low?”

  She didn’t answer.

  •

  Over the next few days I got some strange messages on my answering machine. Charlton left one saying, “I just told it like it was. I had to. I hope it doesn’t mean we can’t still be . . . friends.” Corinne said, “I’m really sorry, but what could I do?” Jason said,
“I wish it really had been true,” and Evan said, “I was glad to set the record straight. I lied when I told Sara your column didn’t bother me. It did.”

  On Wednesday at noon, Sara and I trooped to the Week box on the corner, removed two copies of the paper, and walked to Grand Central Terminal. I had decided an occasion like this merited royal surroundings. We bought sandwiches and sodas at a deli in the station, sat down against a wall under the towering ceiling, and opened up.

  From the Editors

  In her “Run Catch Kiss” column “Den of Len” (March 12, 1997), Ariel Steiner claimed she met a young man at a party, went with him to the East Village pub BarCode, then went to his apartment and engaged in sexual intercourse. This was a fabrication. Although she did attend a party on the night of Friday, March 7, 1997, met a man named Ben Weinstein, and left the party to converse with him at BarCode, Steiner and Weinstein did not have sex. Although Weinstein briefly inserted his thumb into Steiner’s mouth while they sat on a couch in the bar, that was the only penetration that took place over the course of the evening. And although Weinstein does in fact have a poster from the D. A. Pennebaker documentary Don’t Look Back above his futon, Steiner could have had no way of knowing that, as she did not once set foot in the apartment he shares with his girlfriend of a year and a half, Jennifer James, who was away that weekend visiting her sister Sheila in Akron.

  As of Saturday, March 15, Steiner has been dismissed from her position as City Week columnist. We retract “Den of Len” and apologize wholeheartedly for any shame or embarrassment its publication may have caused Mr. Weinstein and Ms. James. We have launched an investigation to determine the veracity of Steiner’s past columns, and at this point can share with you the following information: At least three of them over the past six and a half months—“Rockman” (November 13, 1996), “Smutlife” (December 4, 1996), and “The Kiss” (March 5, 1997)—were partially fabricated; and at least three others—“Dyke Hands” (December 11, 1996), “Pap’s Blue Ribbon” (December 18. 1996), and “The Last Muzzle Guzzle” (January 1, 1997)—were wholly fabricated.

  To all those who were misrepresented in Steiner’s columns, we offer our humblest apologies. We are currently reorganizing our fact-checking department to insure that such a situation never arises again. Once again, we are sorry.