Baby Geisha

by Trinie Dalton

  “That’s a sensitive dog you have there,” Eugene Sr. said. “He’s keeping secrets for you.” Bob, who had made eye contact with Eugene Sr. as he spoke, turned quickly away.

  “Bob taught me how to love,” Eugene said, reaching down to stroke Bob’s voluptuous back. “I hated all forms of life after I thought the river had gobbled you up.”

  “Rivers don’t kill,” his dad said. “It was the rock that cut me, bad. I floated downstream all the way to Ciudad Juárez, unable to land because coyotes, attracted to my bleeding wounds, stalked me on shore. I will never swim again. I am now a terrestrial man.”

  “I see you like acorns,” Eugene said, thinking of a tree’s grounding, rooted nature. “How did you find Slidey?”

  “I smelled the marijuana,” his dad said. “What are you doing out there, getting high all the time and sliding around like you have nothing better to do?”

  Eugene saw nothing wrong with a middle-aged man partying on a rockslide.

  “I could ask you the same thing,” Eugene said. Dinner was barely over, and his dad was already critiquing him. If that’s how it’s going to be, Eugene thought.

  “Dad, why didn’t you tell us you were living in some cave watching us smoke reefer like a dang DEA agent?”

  He’d been right; he did have spies for parents.

  It had been so long that Eugene only remembered his dad—noble hero—as the parent he most resembled. Sometimes when he’d lie on Slidey’s shores, he’d think back to when his dad was alive and try to recall his dad’s face or laugh. During those moments, petting Bob, who was always at Eugene’s side, helped jog Eugene’s memory. Bob was his guardian now as his dad had been then. Bob, although he mostly was Eugene’s chicken-obsessed canine son, also had fatherly qualities. Eugene would never admit, even to his closest buddies or his burly bear ex, Earl, how he thought of his dog as a dad. Bob’s inquisitive nature, and the way his nose combed scents traveling through air like a peregrine falcon, reminded Eugene of his dad’s radical abilities to locate missing objects. Eugene used to pan for gold with his dad, and they’d buried and unearthed in the yard several corked bottles of gold flakes as their own small lode. That way, they had wealth in case of apocalypse.

  This extrasensory perception also translated into his dad’s uncanny knack for detecting his son’s fib.

  “You didn’t call Mom or Dougie, did you?” he asked, as they put cleaned dinner plates away and settled into rum and coke on the couch. Bob was curled up in the armchair, with his chin resting on the arm as he fell into a food coma.

  “Mom will have a coronary,” Eugene said.

  “Have you ever taken her to Slidey?” Eugene Sr. asked. “I’ve never once seen her there.”

  “She’s potamophobic,” Eugene said. “Won’t go near a river.”

  “What I’m wondering is,” Eugene Sr. asked, “how you love the river after thinking I died in it?”

  “Don’t turn this around yet,” Eugene said. “My questions first.”

  Eugene Sr. confessed shame about causing strife in his wife’s life, and asked his son to help rectify it before he retreated back into the woods. It was too bad, he said, that Dougie had missed all the action, but it was Eugene and their mother that he had ventured back into the known world to make amends with. Eugene Sr. was a bit like a hobo, his son came to realize, in that he felt more connected to that land than he did with the wife and kids he left. Eugene didn’t know what Dad’s tramping life had entailed, other than upsetting his mom and nurturing his son’s cowboy fetish. On the other hand, Eugene could now say he was plain chivalric compared to his dad, the family flake. With a burst of bravado, he told his dad his story.

  “I hated rivers and all life within them,” Eugene said.

  His dad poured another round.

  “I hated trout, frogs, and all the smelly aquatic plants. Dougie and I lost seven years defacing rivers and killing their stuff. I trapped so many river animals that Dougie said I could go into business selling pelts. Hell no, I told Dougie, I won’t even feed my dog the fish out that forsaken river.”

  Bob’s ears perked up, until his food coma recommenced.

  “Over time,” Eugene continued, “I softened. We were out there tagging that river almost daily, usually during sunset. One afternoon, when Dougie christened Slidey with a name, it dawned on me that we spent all our time on the river not because we hated it, but because it was our best friend and last connection to you.”

  With this, the men clinked their cocktails together and embraced.

  After this heartwarming confession, Eugene desired to test his manhood again by taking the opportunity to reintroduce his parents. His parents had loved each other but never got along that well. Eugene’s mom had been notoriously paranoid about his dad’s bold expeditions. She claimed that teaching the kids self-sufficiency encouraged their wild streak, which probably was true. Their dad was known to take them out into the dunes, and leave them there with a compass and two water jugs. Their lives were often at risk. But why would a parent oppress a child’s eager disposition? His dad’s tough love had been evident to Eugene before the disappearance.

  Eugene reached over to the armchair and rubbed Bob’s head. He didn’t attempt to shelter Bob from life-threatening adventures. When he found Bob in the animal shelter, and heard how he’d been mushed in no snow all the way down the continent, starved, pulling a packed sled, Eugene knew that in Bob he’d have a resilient companion. He wished Bob was capable of doing this kind of familial dirty work—mediating—the emotional junk a father would do for his son. The ability to pull this off, Eugene thought, is what separates dogs from humans.

  Meanwhile, Slidey was flowing big time. It was April, and the snowmelt made the water rush vigorously, as if the tributary were racing to reach its destination—the majestic Colorado—before the sun siphoned it all into the sky. This is a region of dried up action. Things happen incrementally. The best thing about Slidey is that even when no humans are around, the waterslide gushes forth. Slidey has its own seasonal river dramas. Just because two guys gave Slidey a dumb name and a sacred purpose, Slidey is really just another river stone diverting snowmelt. As life changes daily, it’s Slidey’s job to learn and adjust with resourceful zeal.

  Eugene didn’t remember his mother’s phone number. He had to dig into his backpack lined with sage and marijuana shake to locate his cell phone and then to scroll for his mom’s name: Ismelda. His heart started palpitating as he looked at the call button. Can dogs make phone calls? he wondered.

  “Press the button, son,” his dad said. “Your mother won’t cure my desire to use panties as trailmarkers, but it will be good to see her.”

  Do it for Slidey, Eugene told himself, thinking how pleasant it would be to never again see ladies’ underwear.

  “Trailmarkers, right,” Eugene said.

  His dad smiled and did a booty dance that belied silky material beneath his grungy canvas army pants.

  Eugene wondered if he would have ever met his dad again if he hadn’t allowed Slidey to permeate his psyche with nature’s goodness. Slidey: the spot where Eugene’s new life commenced for the second time. Bob, sensing Eugene’s reluctance to dial, wondered if the phone was something fun to lick.

  BABY GEISHA

  The parking-violations officer bangs on the steamed up window before slapping a ticket under our windshield wiper. I have my head in Grizzly’s lap, sitting in the driver’s seat with his pants unzipped. His penis smells like a butter cookie. His hair, too, is long and butter colored. He is one of the greatest guys I know, only a friend. How did I end up here? He cracks his window and here’s the game: he talks to the parking lady while I shut the world out and suck. Don’t Break My Rhythm. Don’t Break My Rhythm. The violations officer has cracked fuschia lip liner, unattractive in light of the job I am currently undertaking, and her blouse gives her the ruffled look of an ostrich.

  “We’re sitting right here, lady!” Grizz yells, tapping the window with his fing
er. His hard-on gets huge after he shouts.

  She snarls a retort, the voice of a sex-starved woman. Ticketing people is the closest she comes to the thrill of getting a driver’s seat blowjob.

  I am neither an unfaithful wife nor a hooker. What am I? I feel old wondering this. I am neutral, still a woman who aims to please. Tapping into my nasty girl. Someone could host a talk show about this compulsion. A chain gang of middle-aged women stomps out on stage looking whorish with tussled hair. We all look like the ostrich meter maid, rugged. We went haywire after dry spells. I suck dicks when and wherever, says the lady with no bra, showing off a gap between her two front teeth. I don’t suck many but I relish the same few repeatedly, the sultry librarian says. The audience looks to me, but I don’t know what distinguishes me from anyone, including Lucy, the primitive cave woman who probably enjoyed this satisfying sexual act in caves with her hirsute male peers.

  Another hardcore penis dream! These started over a year ago, when I began to think more about babies. I struggle to arise from this Ambien-induced slumber. This one ranks up there in oddity with my husband’s notorious Ambien hallucination, in which he was flown on airborne serapes into the opened top point of a pyramid. It’s already hazy, but what I take from my dream as I wake up is: I will never touch Grizzly, and Don’t Break My Rhythm. My trusty motto. I dress down my repulsion with a straight girl outfit—jeans and a t-shirt—and drag myself into the kitchen for coffee.

  My loyal husband prepares toast, awaiting news from the Dream Time. I feel conflicted about confessing I repeatedly dream about Grizzly’s sexual organ, because in life I’m not even attracted to most men. But there’s no point in lying because Taylor can read my mind. The next time Taylor and I do it, and I vigorously employ a new technique practiced in my subconscious, with someone else, he’ll suspect something. But it’s a free country, dreaming. There’s no such thing as cheating in your sleep. I explain my dream over breakfast.

  “Do you want to date other people?” Taylor asks, taking it as an insult to his own cock.

  “That has nothing to do with it,” I say. “It doesn’t even have to do with men.”

  “So, Claire, do you want to do it right now?” Taylor asks, smiling wryly, still thinking it is about men.

  I like his suggestion, even if that means we drop what it does have to do with. I love my husband tremendously, and morning sex is the best. If it weren’t for morning sex I may stay dreaming all day.

  It has been a month since we stopped living together. Today, I wake up alone in my rented room at a girlfriend’s house. I live with her and her kid. Now I arise daily to a little guy playing pirate. “Hang in there, sister!” my girlfriend tells me on the roughest days.

  I can’t email Taylor, because I started fantasizing about checking his messages to eavesdrop, which I’m totally against. If he’s off in search of a girl who doesn’t want babies, imagining their flirt letters makes it worse. If I don’t get an email from Taylor soon, I’ll know he finally hates me. I cry for thirty minutes over half a box of tissues, try to get up, pull yesterday’s clothes on, brush my teeth. These tasks seem vague and pointless. I pry the curtains open and feel burned, like a vampire. I’m hideous, missing the man who used to ask me about my dreams, which, even though they often include other people, are still ultimately about him.

  Today, I realize more than ever my deep connection with beasts. I was never ruled by reproduction as a means to procreate, animal-like. Now that my body is telling me that it is time to bear a child, I feel unsafe making love, as if my inner-motivation is potent enough to will myself pregnant. It doesn’t matter because Taylor won’t touch me. He’s in Hawaii now, surfing amongst those surf babes who don’t demand anything of him but a co-ride on the next good wave. My feelings remain, so I’m left with my dreams and zero motivation to attempt meeting new guys who may not find me so abominable.

  I know why I have these dreams: blowjobs are foolproof. Open wide. The virgin birth, in which Mary supposedly conceived baby Jesus with no male partnership, is a baby fever fantasy. The virgin birth is like a horror movie to me. Some of my girlfriends over the years, the ones Taylor and I least expected to become mothers, were suddenly hit with baby fever, and bam. There they were, standing big-bellied beside the men they’d found to father their children. Better than virgin births, and such cute babies. But still, I wish I could have a baby with the man I dedicated my life to.

  To Taylor, sex is strictly a performance in which the more eloquently expressed the person’s desires are, the better the results. It’s theater, full of costume. Ideally, sex is his safe spot, where judgment is suspended so we can be free to try new things. Taylor deserves someone experimental and brave, I tell myself while he’s out having fun, without me.

  Last winter, I tried hard to change my predictably female ways. I had a crush on our friend, Rita, because she believes that thinking things through is the most backwards way to live. She acts purely on instinct. For example, one blustery day—five months ago now—the sun made a rare hot appearance in our temporary high-elevation mountain town. Rita was staying with us for two weeks. Our log cabin looked good, buried in snowdrifts, but I felt cooped up. Rita and I dropped everything, put our bikinis on, laid beach towels on the living room floor under a rainbow umbrella, and made spritzy soda drinks to have a beach party. We eventually got too hot to leave our bikinis on. It was the first day Taylor saw us lying together nude. “Cute,” he said, heading out for a walk. I trusted that he meant that.

  A week later, light snow fell through sunshine. Storm clouds rolled across a blue sky and the flurries generated these perfectly star-shaped snow crystals. I finished snowflake hunting in the backyard with my magnifying glass, velvet, and camera, and came in to prepare a pot of Nepalese chai, Rita’s favorite. I took it into her guest room, to show her my snowflake photos. She had hung a pair of underwear, with the crotch burned out, on the wall.

  Rita was painting blood drips down her chin. We’d been practicing werewolf make-up, and she was nailing it this time. She already had newly-dyed black hair, and was planning a photo shoot. We took a coffee break, and I couldn’t resist her looking so bloody.

  “Geisha, will you give me a massage?” she asked.

  I put my mug down and gave her a shoulder rub, then did the rest of her back. I envisioned myself in white face powder, pale enough to pick up other people’s colors, chameleon-like. I know real geishas are far from promiscuous, that they are skilled entertainers, but for this I embraced the prostitute geisha cliché. I owned the caricature; I needed that license.

  “I feel like a businessman,” Rita said.

  “Yes master,” I said, bowing.

  Thirty minutes later, we were both naked and massaging each other over giant almond oil stains on Rita’s bed sheets. Making Rita come made me proud. Rita is a sexpot who doesn’t get emotionally hung-up, so I felt at ease that we could resume our friendship. I’d loved up my sister, family-style, and I was glad we had shared that. I love Rita and still do, and I thought Taylor would have been impressed. There was no competition. Not wanting my husband to feel left out, I gave him full geisha service directly after Rita’s, one room over. The balance was restored, or so I thought. I was a pimp. I put Snoop Dogg on and felt like a bad ass. I dressed like a man for the next few days because my macho levels were through the roof.

  “You did what?” Taylor asked, after asking why my new look was Gangster. Taylor stirred the bean stew with maniacal strength. His reaction was a surprise. He’d done the same a few times, with guys. Rita was in her room, listening to John Cage before she flew out the next day. I’d already resolved this with her, agreeing to keep it tamer from now on. She didn’t want to be a girlfriend casualty, and I agreed completely.

  “I slept with Rita,” I said. “I’m trying to not be shy anymore. Do what I want, like you said.”

  “Don’t pin this on me,” Taylor said, looking away. Minutes passed while we watched the stew boil. “Are you in love with he
r?

  “I love you both,” I said. “Why do I have to choose? I have too much love to give. It’s overflowing. I always end up loving you. Don’t break my rhythm.”

  “Too much love,” Taylor said, marching out onto the cabin’s porch. I followed him out.

  “I hope this is temporary,” he said.

  “I don’t understand why,” I said. “You’ve always wanted me to figure out what I wanted in sex and do it.”

  “Do what you need to do,” he said, heading back in. Each time in the past when he came back to me after being with guys, I’d felt that those were our greatest reunions. Maybe this time there would be no reunion and Taylor’s double standard would rear its ugly head.

  That geisha role cracked me open. I meant her to be sheer sexual exploration. I meant her to improve my understanding of intimacy. But once I unleashed her love, I sensed it bundled up and denied, laying dormant in my body like a hibernating bear. I’ve loved everyone too much since then. My geisha is not devoted exclusively to one person. She is an artisan skilled at pleasing others, who longs for a family. She is even more than pimp love. The geisha’s love, I realized, is motherly. The geisha wants a baby.

  When I met Taylor, I knew I loved him because I saw us growing old together. Those unknown life stages that would unfold between us came to me compressed, in Taylor, as a lodestone. To Taylor, sex never equaled babies. I was fine with that. I assumed since I’d met the right person that we could face the kid issue, in the future. That future is now.

  Last week I talked to Rita on the phone about this urgent future that has pounced upon me like a predatory animal.