by Siel Ju
He cringed. “I haven’t changed it since law school,” he said.
He showed me a bottle of Sangiovese, holding it at an angle like a sommelier, then looked up to see my expression. I raised my eyebrows and murmured something vaguely complimentary. He poured the wine into tall glasses without rinsing out the dust.
We started watching an episode of 24. I’d never seen the show before and couldn’t follow the plot. Kiefer Sutherland was sweating while driving an SUV. “He developed an addiction while undercover,” Jonah said, then put his arm around my shoulders like this revelation brought us closer.
“So he’s the good guy,” I said.
“More or less,” he said, then, “Yes.”
I slipped my shoes off and pulled up my knees, leaned my legs over his lap. His apartment took on a stage-like quality, where none of the actions seemed real. At the first commercial, he turned his head and covered my mouth in his suffocating way.
For a while I tried mirroring his enthusiasm, hands and mouth moving in grabby circles that seemed apologetic, then angry and demanding. Occasionally I could feel my desire shift inside me, but only in an abstract, underwater way.
He suddenly pulled back. “I have to go in to work tomorrow.”
“That’s okay,” I said.
His lips curled up in a quiet, satisfied manner. He quickly restraightened them, then smiled with teeth. I smiled back. He pulled me into him. I turned my head so his mouth moved onto my cheek, my neck. His lips felt soggy and glutinous.
He pulled me down to the floor, into the space between the couch and the coffee table. It was a really narrow space, with the glass edge of the coffee table partially above us. It reminded me of being on Allen’s top bunk bed, so close to the ceiling we’d had to move cautiously. With Allen’s body over mine I’d had the sensation of being boxed in and pinned down, vulnerable under his cool, shy hands. Allen was always timid to start, but unstoppable after that. The first time we slept together he kept thrusting after he came, so the condom rolled off and lodged inside me in a coil. He was gentle as he reached his fingers in to drag it out, apologizing. Maybe he liked that moment of tenderness. Maybe that’s what I liked too, the collusion, cleaning up the small, organized mess of planned mistakes.
Jonah’s ad-hoc floor space was even tighter. With much effort he managed to unbutton my shirt and take it off, first lifting one shoulder and twisting out an arm, then the other. I could barely move, only shift a little. At first my inertness seemed to make him self-conscious, but then he took to it, asserting his will without preamble or apology. He bit my breasts, gently at first, and then with aggression. He clawed down my stomach, then started fiddling with the clasp to my pants. He had trouble with it but didn’t seem to want help, wanted to show me he could figure it out. He wriggled uncomfortably, rubbing his erection against me. He tried pulling at my pants again, and this time, hit his funny bone on the coffee table with a loud bang.
“Are you okay?” I said.
“That hurt.” His voice was small and angry.
“Do you want to stop?”
“If you want to.” He seemed to be seething, even bared his teeth. Then he turned up the corners of his mouth to mimic a sad smile.
I sat up. “Well,” I said. “Since you’re working tomorrow.”
He watched me button my shirt.
“I guess I should get home,” I said.
He flinched, then his manners came back. “It’s still early,” he said, “if you want to hang out for a bit.”
I got up, then plopped down heavily on the couch. My limbs felt heavy and lax, like they preferred their previous catatonic state. “Okay,” I said. I stifled a yawn. “I’ve been really lethargic lately for some reason. It isn’t you.” I let my head fall back so I was looking up at the ceiling. “Actually I found out someone I knew from college died. Someone I dated. It wasn’t serious but it was intense, for a little bit. Physically intense. I mean, it was someone I used to sleep with.”
He was quiet and I couldn’t see his expression. I heard him lift himself up to the couch. There was a long pause.
“Do you want to talk about it?” he said.
“No,” I said. “Not at all. I don’t know why I brought it up. I barely knew him and it wasn’t a big deal. But thanks.”
24 was still playing. We watched without interest. Jonah started rubbing my neck and shoulders, awkwardly, his arm crooked in a weird angle against the back of the couch. I turned to make it easier, and he pulled me against him so my back was against his chest, our heads turned to the right to face the screen. He eased his hands down to my stomach, then swirled them around in small, massaging circles. The circles slowly grew bigger, until his hands were grazing the bottom part of my breasts, then eventually brushing over my nipples, surreptitiously, like he was hoping I wouldn’t notice and stop him.
Finally I said, “Should we go to your bedroom?”
“If you want to,” he said quickly.
His bed looked like it had just been made. I eased my shoes off and lay down. I realized I was tired; I felt my body fall for what seemed like miles. I closed my eyes. In a minute he started to touch me, but I stayed still, which felt interesting, almost pleasurable. When I opened my eyes again he gave me a look of confusion and veiled repugnance. At that I mustered up my strength and sat up, took my clothes off like a Band-Aid before sinking back again. I watched him undress hurriedly, trying to shield his middle; he wasn’t overweight, but a little soft. He covered my body with his. He rolled around on top of me grabbing and sucking parts of my body, at times self-consciously, at times more heatedly. I veered between feeling guilty for not being more involved, and feeling entertained with a sort of cruel mirth. Occasionally, I wanted to laugh out loud. He seemed to be really exerting himself, working hard for a reaction.
He touched me between my legs. “Should I get a condom,” he said. His face had a somewhat grim, expectant look.
“Okay,” I said.
He sat turned away from me to put on the condom, then hurriedly flipped on top of me, hiding himself. He fucked me in a furtive, discomfited sort of way, not meeting my eyes—quick, strained thrusts, then a suppressed grunt when he came. It was over quickly.
Afterwards, he immediately snapped up and near-ran to the bathroom to throw the condom in the trash. When he came back, he had on boxers and a look of self-loathing.
“Hey,” I said.
We settled into bed, but I could tell he wanted me to leave. I stayed naked, my head on the pillow with the comforter up to my waist, and that seemed to make him uncomfortable. He offered me a T-shirt but I declined because I didn’t want to bother sitting up to put it on. He sat upright a foot away from me, and when he talked he stared hard at my face, his eyes tense and fixed away from my breasts. After a few minutes he said he needed to check his email for work, and I said “mm-hmm” and blinked softly, like I was falling asleep. He turned out the light and left the room.
I too wished I was in my own bed, but the effort to dress myself and drive home felt too great. I wondered why we’d forcibly put ourselves through the trouble of sleeping with each other, like we were both trying to prove something about ourselves. I tried to remember why I’d slept with Allen, but the feelings I could recall were too filled with the angst of the relationship’s ending. I couldn’t remember any of the exact words Allen had said, just the tones of his voice—warm and shy and bewildered at the beginning, hard and unforgiving at the end. What I recalled more clearly were the fantasies I indulged in after it all ended—both the sweet drama of painful reconciliation and the violent red crush of his head under my heel.
I stretched out in shavasana pose and breathed deeply to induce sleep. Through the door I heard Jonah’s voice on the phone. He said something that sounded like “obdurate fish.” I thought he was insulting me, but I must have misheard, because then I heard him say, “It’s part of the Robertson case.” He sounded cold and cynical, like a man in the know.
The Locust o
f Desire
boy with black arm socks at Insomnia—Los Angeles
You’re not the usual guy I date, but maybe it’s practical to date men your friends find slightly repulsive.
blue polo shirt guy at Urth Caffé—West Hollywood
You were with a girl who I think was your girlfriend, but you looked unhappy. I overheard you say something about the locus (locust?) of desire. The most important moments are the most mundane ones enacted at the right places, then narrated with insolence.
caffeinated dogwalker at Coral Tree Café—Brentwood
We were there before the lunch rush. You gently tied the leash to the parking meter, gave each dog an approval pat before going in. The intimate relationship between strangers.
gray suit sans tie at Bread & Porridge—Santa Monica
You looked a little breathless, like you’d been running, standing by the eye-level shelf with its eight glasses, lined up, lip down. Above, a bronze ceiling fan spun athletically. Cheap brown leather couches crowded into a blank space punctuated by a few large, leafy floor plants. They matched each other, but nothing else. In the corner, a stand of condiments and five wooden pepper mills watched us inhale, exhale in harmony. You were the perfect complement to the setting.
boy eating herring at Warszawa—Santa Monica
You watched my surreptitious shedding of socks, laughed back when I looked up and noticed you were watching. Later, your friend came over and asked to buy me a drink. Societal norms seem an overwrought mass of laughable formalities, don’t they?
boy in oversized art books section at library—Downtown
By the time you walked in, everyone else already looked like they’d come to terms with their loneliness.
guy with green bookbag in Fairmont Hotel—Santa Monica
You were walking with someone who looked like your father, and I think you thought I was looking at him. I’d like to think of myself as the kind of girl who has affairs with older men, that I give them a fair shot to turn me on. But it’s impossible to get past the receding hairline, the slightly protruding belly, the striped golf shirt, the sunburned and overeager smile. I was in the narrow bar with my laptop open, playing business girl getting a few clicks of work done before the big industry conference tomorrow. Maybe you’re too young to join me for a drink, but I hope you’ll relish the anonymity of the city. Strangers, whether desirable or frightening, will disappear forever by the eleven a.m. checkout time.
guy with black hat at Stephen Cohen—Los Angeles
When we spoke, I had a hangover pain under my left eye. Everyone else had been to therapists with the same training as mine. When I opened my mouth, they looked at me actively and punctuated the ends of my sentences with an individualized assent that sounded unlike the usual uh-huh. Today, the physical pain isn’t as acute. The people we know are completely random. And I suppose there’s a beauty in it, but most of the time it just seems like a fucking mess.
boy reading Monkeybicycle at Dutton’s—Brentwood
I could see you were reading a poem, tracing your finger below each line to focus an attention that wanted out. I remember liking the idea of poetry, but now it’s difficult for me to figure out what, if anything, I enjoy. Meaning: everything seems enjoyable in a stuffing-envelopes sort of way. Stuffing a lot of envelopes and watching a stack grow becomes mildly satisfying. Write and black letters fill up a page, except there’s that question of substance. I suppose you could get nitpicky about stuffing envelopes too—folding letters in perfectly creased thirds, moistening the lip of the envelope without wobbles, putting the stamp on an exact eighth of an inch in from both the top and right edges. With poetry I can be attentive—pay attention to handwriting, grammar, syntax, all of that—but in the end I may as well have filled the pages with s’s. Or o’s. Or just diagonal slashes.
The Regulars
The morning of Erin’s birthday, I called it quits with Blake. The break was all in my head; I didn’t try to talk to him because I thought he might act like I was wasting his time, calling him about something so trivial. Still, I found myself seething in the slack pockets of the day, turning over in my mind one or another deprecating thing he’d said. He’d been intense in bed but sadistic outside it, criticizing what I wore, how I ate, though I wasn’t overweight, just not lean like he was. He was rarely free. I’d meet him at his place after work, and he’d fuck me in his bathroom where he was getting ready to go out again, usually to some nebulous work function, though I’d stopped asking. Afterwards he’d grab a handful of my ass and say he liked having something to hold on to, in a tone that suggested he didn’t. Then he’d squeeze and laugh.
Mostly, I was angry at myself. I had allowed his casual cruelty. I had let him redirect his self-loathing out at me. That said, my memory of him, of all my relationships, had a remote, otherworldly quality I could almost dismiss as a dream.
That night Erin decided we’d go karaokeing at Backstage. “There’s nowhere to sit,” she yelled when we got there. She didn’t sound particularly peeved by it though. We’d taken a cab, already drunk from our happy hour turned late dinner. Erin scanned the crowd purposefully, her eyelids in a droopy leer. A girl in a tight black tank and muffin top jeans was singing “The Locomotion.” Her friends gyrated frenetically in front of the stage, beers in hand. I spotted a quartet of college guys spread out over two tables on the wall facing the stage. I asked if we could squeeze in, using big, exaggerated gestures to communicate over the music. They scooted over. The boy at the end said something unintelligible as I sat next to him. I scanned the crowd at the bar.
“You don’t remember me,” I heard the guy speak again, louder this time, at the back of my head. “When you came over I thought maybe you did.”
I turned. “We’ve met?” He was smiling. He was on the pale side and had the face of a bashful teenager. He wore black, boxy glasses which helped make him look slightly older, in a vaguely corporate way.
“I work at Intelligentsia,” he said. “I made you a latte. Last week.”
I remembered the latte. I’d ordered it after waiting twenty minutes for Blake to show, which he did right after the barista told me I had a great smile, and that the drink was on the house. I’d been too focused on Blake to say thanks. “Do you always wear glasses?” I asked.
He smiled; he hadn’t heard me over the music. He asked me if he could buy me a drink.
I took a minute to answer, and in the pause he blurted, “I’m twenty-two.” He looked embarrassed, though he held my gaze. I shrugged and told him I was twenty-nine. He nodded like he’d already known this but was glad to hear me say it anyway.
At this, I suddenly found myself drawn to him. He seemed open and untouched, like someone I could have a pure exchange with.
His name was Matt. He’d majored in business at USC, then taken a year off to travel around Europe and Asia. Now he was killing time working at the coffee shop for a few months before starting his job at a mobile tech company where he’d interned one summer. He acted impressed that I was a freelance writer. He said he’d never been good at writing. I told him I didn’t write anything original, just followed a format and formula, but he looked at me like he thought I was being modest. As he finished his drink my Mai Tai arrived; I hadn’t had one since college but I’d wanted something sweet. We shared it, then he ordered another. We put in some songs but they didn’t come up. He said he enjoyed traveling but that a year may have been too long, that he was ready to “start real life.” I told him I was too, although I didn’t really know what that meant anymore. He nodded seriously.
“You must give out a lot of free lattes,” I said.
I assumed he’d deny it, but when he kept smiling shyly and said, “No, I really don’t,” I believed him.
By this time we were both pretty drunk. Two overweight guys sang “Last Dance with Mary Jane” as an off-tune duet, hands on each other’s shoulders. The bar started to empty. When Matt’s friends left, I looked around for Erin and finally saw her in pa
rtial shadow at the left corner of the stage, making out heavily with a dark-haired guy. He was grabbing at the backs of her thighs. His T-shirt had rolled up a little, revealing a hint of a beer gut. They were really grinding into each other, her breasts mashed against his chest. Watching them, I became very aware of Matt’s body, or how aware he was of his. His movements seemed to get smaller, like he was afraid if he touched me, I’d disappear. This made me feel more receptive and encouraging. The cocktail waitress came over and Matt cut his hand across his throat.
Outside the moon looked liquid, like it had melted a little. The sky was inky, glimmery. When I turned my head the moon too seemed to move, leaving a streak as in a long exposure photograph. Matt’s eyes looked glassy, his face delicate and malleable. I watched the moon on his glasses, thinking about the eager way he shared my drink, the fragile reserve in the way he gestured. His open manner was sweet, but it was the reticence that made me see him tenderly. I didn’t think I could ease it, exactly, but I wanted to touch it, feel its texture on my skin.
He was parked three blocks away on a residential street. When we got there I kissed him, just our lips touching, his hand on the passenger door he’d been about to open for me. Afterwards we stood in the cold looking at each other.
“I should get home,” I said.
He drove. Time warped to slow motion, blurring the lights in Culver City, then skipped forward in staccato rhythm. Some moments, I got mesmerized by the trees whipping by, then gradually came back into awareness.
“That guy you were with last week,” Matt said.
“That’s over.”
“Oh.” He paused. “I wasn’t sure. I thought maybe he was your boss or something.”
I felt my anger rise again. The coffee date had been one of the rare times Blake had agreed to meet me outside his apartment. But he’d sat facing the door, watching the steady parade of women in yoga halters and skinny jeans. He didn’t touch me except when he accidentally kicked me under the table, twice. He didn’t order anything, just scowled every time I sipped my latte. Finally he asked me if I could drink any slower.