Home Run

by Paul Kropp

  “Let me go change into something a bit more comfortable,” Gloria said after finishing her drink.

  I seemed to remember this line from an old black-and-white movie, but it still sent my blood racing. “Something a bit more comfortable”—wasn’t that a euphemism for something sexy and revealing? And if Gloria was changing into something sexy, what should I do? I considered this problem for a second, then quickly took off my socks and stuck them in my pockets. I had learned my sock lesson with Shauna, and had vowed never again to be caught with nothing on but my socks.

  Then I looked at myself in the hall mirror and decided to unbutton my shirt to reveal a bit of my non-hairy chest. I figured this would give me a manly, I’m-ready-for-sex look. I tried to get the same look on my face, but I wasn’t sure that the effort was a success.

  “Making faces in the mirror?” Gloria asked when she came downstairs. She was dressed in a very large, very cuddly bathrobe that may—or may not!—have anything underneath.

  “Oh, no, not really,” I said.

  “Maybe you’d like another Scotch?” she asked.

  “Oh, no, no. I’m fine.”

  “Then let’s go watch a movie. The kids are asleep and the night is ours.”

  Another line from a forties film! Thank goodness for all those old films I used to watch with Maggie; now the subtle clues were beginning to make sense.

  We got to the family room and Gloria popped a DVD of The English Patient into the machine, then grabbed a blanket off one chair and came back towards the couch. I was watching her every move, still trying to figure out if she was wearing anything under the bathrobe.

  “So you decided not to wait for me to unbutton your shirt,” she said, laughing.

  “Well, I, uh, got you started.”

  “You know, with this blanket and the bathrobe, I think I’m going to get quite warm. Can you think of anything I could do to fix that, Alan?”

  “Well, uh, you could, like, take off your bathrobe.”

  She laughed at me, as I deserved. I made a point of not using “like” like that when I spoke to Gloria so she wouldn’t think I was a kid. But now I was talking just like a kid. On the other hand, maybe that’s what she wanted.

  “You are a bit naughty, you know.”

  “I try,” I sighed.

  With that, she opened the robe and tossed it over to one side. Beneath the robe, Gloria was not naked—she was better than naked. She was in lingerie!

  I don’t think women my age know the power of lingerie. In my somewhat limited experience with girls in various states of undress, their bras and panties tended to be utilitarian, which is to say, dull. The bras and panties were white or beige cotton and rarely transparent or lacy; they did their basic job of supporting or padding or shielding various parts without suggesting that anything too enticing might lie beneath.

  But not lingerie. Lingerie is smooth and lacy and suggestive and enticing.

  Gloria stood before me in a silken black teddy with just a touch of lace at the bodice.

  “You like?” Gloria asked.

  I responded with a dropped jaw and an inarticulate moan.

  In a second, Gloria had covered us both with the blanket and snuggled in beside me. We began kissing as she unbuttoned my shirt. I tried to remember Maggie’s old instructions on how to deal with this moment in the process of seduction. Was the rule Do not grope, manhandle, or squeeze? Or was the rule Follow the woman’s lead?

  I decided that any woman unbuttoning my shirt was inviting me to explore both the lingerie and what lay beneath it.

  In only a few minutes, Gloria had managed to remove all of my clothing while hardly breaking lip contact. Again, the mark of an experienced woman. My blood was racing and my mind was busy trying to think of what to do next. When does the guy put on a condom? Was this the moment? Should I ask her first? Why hadn’t I practised putting on a condom so I’d know how to do it?

  All these questions were zooming through my mind when the phone rang.

  “Let it ring,” I begged.

  “It’ll wake the kids,” she said, suddenly practical. I think older women can do that—switch instantly from the romantic to the practical. But would she switch back again?

  Gloria reached over to a side table and picked up the phone on its third ring. Something was spoken on the other end of the line, and my wonderful, sensual Gloria suddenly became tense and angry.

  “Why are you calling?” she snapped.

  Again there were some words spoken at the other end, but those I couldn’t hear. The only words that reached my ears were from Gloria, so the other part of the conversation was just in my imagination.

  “Who says that anybody is here?”

  Again some garbled words came through the receiver.

  “Okay, so maybe I am with somebody right now. What difference does that make to you?” Gloria snapped. “I can see who I want, when I want. We’re separated, Geoff. You understand the word? I could spell it for you if that would help.”

  There was a pause while Geoff explained that he didn’t need help with spelling.

  “Don’t threaten me, you jerk. If you even try to get into this house, I’m calling 9–1-1. You hear that, 9–1-1.”

  The garbled voice at the other end was louder and seemed angrier.

  Gloria was getting angrier, too. “I’m not going to listen to any more of your threats. I’m serious. You come anywhere near here and my guy Alan will take that knife of yours and stick it…” I won’t continue, since the conversation was getting increasingly profane. At the end, Gloria swore at him and slammed down the phone.

  “Sorry,” she said. “He always was a jealous bastard.”

  I took her in my arms, trying to comfort her as best I could. Part of me enjoyed comforting a beautiful woman dressed only in lingerie and hoped that it might be the prelude to a night of passionate love.

  But another part of me was busy reconstructing the other half of the phone conversation. There were certain elements—jealousy, a knife, a threat—that were unsettling, to say the least. Where did the ex-husband live? Did he still have a key to Gloria’s house? Would he, while we were making out, sneak into the house with his knife and try to use it on me or Gloria?

  “Alan, I’m afraid I’ve kind of spoiled the mood,” she said.

  I kissed her tear-stained cheeks. “I still think you’re wonderful,” I said.

  “Let me see if I can bring the mood back,” she said, scrooching down on the couch.

  Oh, this is good, I thought to myself. Older women know how to restore the mood, how bring a man back. Gloria was doing just that, and quite successfully, when I heard a noise somewhere in the house.

  The husband, I thought. With a knife.

  I tensed up and shrivelled up at the same time.

  “Alan, what’s the matter?” Gloria asked.

  “I…I heard something.”

  We both listened, but there was no more sound. On TV, there was a steamy sex scene between Ralph Fiennes and Kristin Scott Thomas; on the couch, there was a potentially steamy sex scene going on between Gloria and me.

  Then I heard the noise again…footsteps. Yes, there were definitely footsteps in the house. I was about to say something, about to overcome my fear and actually whisper a warning, when the door to the family room flew open.

  “Yiii!” I screamed.

  “Mommy!” screamed a child.

  There was a pause. Gloria lifted her head and looked, as I did, towards the door.

  It was Little Lexy, standing with her brother in the doorway. “My tummy hurts!” she cried.

  Gloria sat up. The two children just stared at us.

  “Why was your head in Alan’s lap?” demanded the little girl.

  Gloria thought quickly. “Mommy lost a contact lens,” she said. This explanation seemed pretty bogus to me, but seemed to satisfy Lexy. Young Brad, however, looked at us with a weary, cynical expression. No seven year old should ever have such a world-weary look on his f
ace.

  “I need med’cine,” said Lexy, holding her painful stomach for added effect.

  “Of course you do, dear,” Gloria told her. “Let’s just go up to the bathroom and get you something.”

  Gloria got up and put on her bathrobe, neatly covering me up with a blanket in the process. Then she dutifully led her two children up the stairs, keeping one eye half closed as if the missing contact lens were causing her distress.

  I was alone. The steamy love scene on the TV screen was finished, and now we were back in the North African desert. The not-so-steamy love scene on the couch was in pause mode.

  Unfortunately, there was an ongoing problem. Even if Gloria decided to have sex with me here on the couch, there was no way I was physically capable. I looked under the blanket and shook my head in despair. I was shrivelled up by fear of discovery and general confusion. This is not going well, I told myself.

  When Gloria returned, I had to do better. Think erotic thoughts, I told myself. I tried to think of Gloria in her lingerie, but that image morphed into one of her construction-worker husband holding a knife. So I thought about a girl in my women’s studies course, and then about a girl I’d seen on the bus, and then about Maggie. But each of these images got confused with Gloria’s ex-husband, and the kids, and the desperate situation I was now facing. Blood was racing through my head, through my body, pulsing everywhere—except down there.

  Just when I thought that my situation couldn’t get worse, there was a knock on the front door. “Gloria, open up!”

  I panicked. I confess that now, because I have lived to tell the tale. I just panicked. A naked man is in no position to take on an angry ex-husband. Quickly, almost instantly, I had my clothes back on. By the time the ex-husband pounded on the door for a second time, I was putting on my socks. By the time he pounded for a third time, I was out in the kitchen, quietly opening the back door.

  I stepped out into the cold night air. I was in the backyard, hiding between the garage and a small climber set. From inside the house, I could hear the sound of angry voices—Gloria and her ex—voices full of accusations and denial, anger and threats. Finally Gloria said something like “I’m calling the police” and the husband went stomping off; the front door slammed as he left.

  I was shivering, from cold or fear or both. At last I heard a car motor start up, and then the screech of tires as—I hoped—the ex-husband drove off in a rage.

  When the fear died down, I realized I had a choice. I could go back into the house, wait until the children were asleep, and then try to pick up our paused sex scene where we had left off. I could pray that the intervening time would let my body recover, would let Gloria mellow out, and would give us a slim chance at restoring the mood. I could do that. I could risk another phone call, another discovery, another almost-confrontation with the ex-husband. I could be brave, bold, daring, and romantic.

  Or I could slink away into the night. I could leave my jacket behind, tie up the laces on my shoes, and just slink away into the night.

  May the good Lord forgive me for my cowardice!

  11

  Dysfunctional Thoughts

  ERECTILE DYSFUNCTION! I woke up the next day thinking not about Gloria, not about the ex-husband, and not about slinking into the night. I thought about my penis.

  My body had totally let me down. It had failed me in my moment of need!

  If that isn’t erectile dysfunction, I don’t know what is. I checked the web just to be sure, but the verdict was clear. “Erectile dysfunction: the inability to obtain and/or maintain an erection sufficient for sexual activity.” That was it.

  Of course, age eighteen-almost-nineteen is a bit young for ED, but such cases are not unheard of. “Although erectile dysfunction is more common in men older than sixty-five, it can occur at any age. An occasional episode of erectile dysfunction happens to most males at one time or another. In fact, it’s usually nothing to worry about.” Ha! That’s easy for the Mayo Clinic website to say, but when you’re at the other end of a case of ED, as it were, it is not a trifling matter.

  I had been impotent, to use that old-fashioned word. I had run the bases and was ready to run for home, but suddenly my knees (okay, not my knees, but let me go with the metaphor) collapsed beneath me. Impotens, to be without power, without strength, without virility. That was me. I had failed the challenge—the challenge of sex with an older women, the challenge of her threatening husband, the challenge of real life!

  I was a wimp, a miserable, cowardly, impotent wimp.

  So just as I was approaching midterms, I collapsed into a pit of despondency. Yes, I was powering up my vocabulary, but my more crucial parts just weren’t working. Perhaps I should just give up on women and become a monk. Perhaps I should abandon any hope for sex and take a vow of chastity. Since I already suffered from ED, I really had nothing to lose.

  So I emailed Maggie. I told her that my fling with an older woman had come to a crashing halt. I even told her the story of that fateful night, omitting my ED problem, of course. Unfortunately, she gave me no sympathy.

  To: amacklin@​BU.​edu

  From: maggiemac@​sl.​edu

  Serves you right, Al. You bring that poor woman into physical danger, then go hide when the husband arrives. That was not a class act, Mr. Macklin. No sense calling her again, you blew your chance. If there were a pill for courage, I’d recommend it to you, or maybe you can get some phony wizard to give you a medal, à la Wizard of Oz. In the meanwhile, might as well stay celibate.

  Incidentally, I’ve decided to take that ski invitation for Christmas. I might make a fool of myself, but I’ve done that once or twice before, and this guy really is quite attractive. If you’re going to play around with older women, I guess that gives me permission, right?

  If anything could push me lower still, Maggie’s email did the trick. Why? We had gone out for a year, fooled around, but never actually had sex. We liked each other, we enjoyed each other’s company, we were friends…but somehow it stopped there. Maggie knew it and I knew it. Prime time versus afternoon soaps—simple as that.

  So why was I so upset that she was going off on a ski holiday with some guy? After all, I emailed her about my various adventures and misadventures, surely she should have the same rights. Fair is fair, isn’t it? All’s fair in love and war, isn’t it?

  Actually, no. In war, there are the Geneva Conventions. They stop an army from torturing its opponents or starving its prisoners of war or massacring civilians. So war has rules. What are the rules for romance, anyhow?

  “Deep thoughts?” Kirk asked.

  “Semi-deep,” I replied. “Maybe shallow-end-of-the-pool thoughts.”

  “Deep enough,” he replied, sitting down on my bed. He had to push aside my plush-toy hamster to do so.

  I was sitting at my computer, trying to hammer together a three-thousand-word essay on “Bette Davis as a Feminist Avatar in the 1940s.” It was actually a paper for my film class, but I figured that some of the material might work for women’s studies as well. Two birds with one stone, you might say. The most impressive part of my essay so far was the word avatar, which meant 1) an incarnation of a god in human form; and 2) an embodiment (as of a concept or philosophy) in a being, often a person. Any essay with the word avatar has to be worth at least a B. Now I just needed another twenty-nine hundred words or so to finish it up.

  “Al, I’ve been worried about you lately,” Kirk said. “You don’t seem to be your usual self.”

  “I’ve got three major essays due in the next week,” I told him.

  He shook his head. “That’s not it. You could knock off a major essay before breakfast if you felt like it. What’s the matter? Has it got something to do with that Gloria person you were seeing?”

  I flipped around in my chair and looked at him. I guess Kirk was the only person at school who knew me well enough to see through my lies.

  “Yeah, well, kind of.”

  “You fall for her?”

>   “No, nothing like that,” I sighed. “It just didn’t work out, that’s all.”

  “That’s all?” he asked.

  “Yeah, that. And I found out I had a certain medical condition.” Now Kirk seemed almost shocked, and it took me a second to read his mind.

  “No, it’s not an STD or AIDS,” I told him. “Nothing like that. Just a…a condition.”

  Kirk sighed, perhaps relieved that I hadn’t picked up something contagious. After all, if my toothbrush had touched his toothbrush…well, you never know.

  “You see a doctor?” Kirk asked.

  “No, not exactly,” I replied. I wasn’t going to admit that I’d only done Internet diagnosis.

  “Maybe you should hop over to the clinic,” he suggested. “They were pretty good when I had that stomach flu.”

  “Yeah, maybe,” I said. “But I’m kind of hoping the problem will go away by itself.”

  That sounded pretty lame. Maybe I should actually go to the clinic and tell some doctor about my ED. It would be embarrassing, of course, but maybe the doc would write me a prescription for Viagra or some other miracle drug.

  “Well, good luck,” Kirk said, and surely I could use some of that. “But I’ve got an idea that might perk you up a little. Why not come out to our ranch over Christmas? You’ve probably never been to a real working ranch before, and you might find it interesting.

  “A ranch? Like with cows?”

  “Steers,” he corrected. “The house is quite big and my family is kind of interested in meeting you. You could do a stopover on your plane ticket, stay a couple days, then go on to your parents’ place.”

  “Would I, like, have to go to church?”

  “No pressure, Al. If you want to join us on Christmas day, fine. If you want to stay at the house and watch TV, that’s fine, too.”

  “Really?”