Because They Wanted To: Stories

by Mary Gaitskill

  “Spare me the masochism. I don’t respect you now.” She turned, manhandled the door, and walked out.

  He followed her out onto the sidewalk. When she heard him she turned; he thought he saw a flicker of relief on her face before it went indignant again.

  “Nicki, come on. It’s not that bad. I did not rip you off.”

  “And what was that shit just now about me and Lana? What was that?”

  “I was just responding to—”

  “Let’s be honest for a second. The reason you wrote that bitchy piece of junk is that I wouldn’t fuck you. We both know that. You were mad at me because you ran around my heels like a little dog for months and—”

  He slapped her hard, clipping her across her cheekbone and nose. She staggered and froze in disbelief. Remorse dilated his heart. The busy tableau of daytime Manhattan became a gray backdrop for the hugeness of Nicki’s face and the disembodied heads of strangers turning to stare in disgust at the swine who’d struck this small, fragile woman. “Watch it, buddy,” said someone. He turned with an impulse to explain himself, and then she was on him, punching his face and body, hammering his shins with her feet.

  “You little piece of shit!” she screamed. “You nothing! You dare to hit me, I’ll kill you!” She sprang away and ran down the street, her handbag flapping at her side.

  He fled to the King Farouk Room.

  That day and the next were rent with sadness. He was mortified that he’d hit her and glad she’d hit him. Perhaps he had done the wrong thing; perhaps he had stolen her life. Perhaps he should rewrite the screenplay, modifying her character. Then he would think, Why should he? What about artistic license? What about the way she’d led him on?

  He went out and got drunk alone for the first time in weeks. On his way home he emptied his pockets of dollars, to the delight of the homeless who received them. He considered passing out on the side-walk but went home instead.

  The next day he crept out to find stabilizing carbohydrates for his listing body. He went into a coffee shop and, while he was waiting for his muffins and coffee, had the irrational wish that he’d never sold his screenplay, that he could just be sitting here among these bleary people, sharing coffee with Nicki. The sun poured through the smeared window, and a swarm of dust churned visibly in the air. A woman’s eyeglasses became fierce shields of opaque reflection, an old man’s hair turned inhumanly silver.

  His imagination opened in a dark, fecund slice. He imagined himself five years thence, living in a sun-desiccated white bungalow in L.A., a sought-after scriptwriter. One day he would get a call; there was renewed interest in Kiss and Tell. Why? Because Nicki Piastrini wanted the lead. Once the years had passed and her anger had faded, she had seen that the script was not only brilliant but the role of a life-time, written by—basically—loving hands, for her and only for her.

  He took a swallow of the cold, dirty ice water that had been placed before him, not even noticing the long black hair clinging to the lip of the glass. In his mind he heard the climactic finale of a song about doomed love, the singer crying, “Jamais! Jamais, jamais, jamais, jamais!”

  His fantasy did not include a reunion with Nicki or even a conversation. Instead, he fast-forwarded straight to an image of himself at a preliminary screening of Kiss and Tell, at which Nicki was strangely absent. He sat in the plush privacy of darkness, feeling intensely replete and resolved, waiting to see the lover who had slipped away, caught in his net of words. In his fantasy the script had not been rewritten, the way scripts always are, and his words fell on him in a rain of affirmation. Nicki’s huge, cinematically beautified face bloomed violently before him, sprung from some part of his psyche that was too dark for him to see. The character—his character—was a mutable androgyne wearing glittering psychic armor over its woman’s form, beautiful and seemingly without substance, yet impenetrable. When she was brought low in the film, it was with fabulous erotic drama, the realization that her armor was torn and her defeat could be boundaryless. He imagined the pivotal scene, her confrontation with the magazine editor. The blood rushed to Lesly’s crotch as the editor circled Nicki, her delicious look of fear increasing with each circle. The scene became sexy. Close-up: Her eyes looked into the camera, inviting penetration through the openness of her expression. His sense of triumphant possession would be mitigated only by his admiration for her acting. He inhaled and leaned forward as if to grab something in his hands—when, like an eel turning around on itself in a tiny space, his fantasy changed direction. Nicki faced the camera as the editor, seen from behind, greedily seized her. Close-up: By sensual gradations, her vulnerable expression became hard and predatory. Irrationally, the scene held static, as Nicki seemed vampirically to draw the editor’s aggression from him, to make it her own. The man whom Lesly had invented to violate Nicki was alchemically subsumed by her, as she swallowed Lesly’s triumph whole. Except that in his fantasy, her triumph felt like his. His grabbing hands closed on air. From inside his head, Nicki smiled at him and pinned him to his seat. Involuntarily, he smiled back; smiling, he let her go. He came back into the coffee shop as if waking up and, in doing so, releasing a dream into the world. A cloud covered the glaring sun, and someone violently blew his nose.

  He did move to Los Angeles and he did write many more screen-plays, some of which were actually produced. There was, however, no renewed interest in Kiss and Tell. Although he saw her in several films, he never saw Nicki in person again.

  The Wrong Thing

  Turgor

  Today the clerk in the fancy deli next door asked me how I was, and I said, “I have deep longings that will never be satisfied.” I go in there all the time, so I thought it was okay. But she frowned slightly and said, “Is it the weather that does it to you?” “No,” I said, “it’s just my personality.” She laughed.

  It’s the kind of thing that I enjoy saying at the moment but that has a nasty reverb. I want it to be a joke, but I’m afraid it’s not.

  Last week a woman I have not spoken to for years called to tell me that someone I used to have sex with had died of a drug overdose. I was shocked to hear it, but not especially sorry. He’d had a certain fey glamour and a knack for erotic chaos that was both exhilarating and horrible, but he was essentially an absurdly cruel, absurdly unhappy person, and I thought that, in the end, he was probably quite relieved to go. I had not seen him in ten years, and our association had been pornographic, loveless, and stupid. We had had certain bright moments of camaraderie and high jinks, but none of it justified the feelings I’d had for him. Even now he occasionally appears in my dreams—loving and tender, smiling as he hands me, variously, a candy bar, a brightly striped glass ball, a strawberry-scented candle. In one dream he grew wings and flew to South America with me clinging to his back, ribbons flying from our hair and feet.

  “I know he hurt you,” my friend said. “But I think he hurt himself a lot more.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “He did.”

  When I got off the phone, I sat still for some moments. Then I got up and dressed for the party I was about to attend. It was a birthday party for an acquaintance, a self-described pro-sex feminist who had created a public niche for herself as a pornographer and talk-show guest. I put on a see-through blouse, a black bra, a tiny black skirt, high-heeled boots, and a ratty black wig I had found in the bargain bin of a used-clothing store.

  I took a taxi to the party, and the driver, whom I had engaged in conversation, commented on my clothes. “I just wondered,” he said, “why you’re dressed so, well, so . . . I mean . . .”

  “You mean like a slut?”

  “Uh, yeah.” He glanced in his rearview. “Not that I’m saying anything.”

  “It’s okay,” I said. “It’s because I think it’s fun. It’s not a big scary sex thing. It’s an enthusiastic, participatory kind of thing. Besides, I’m thirty-nine, and pretty soon I won’t be able to do it anymore, because I’ll be an old bag.”

  He nodded thoughtfully “Well, that
’s cool,” he said. “It’s just that you don’t seem like the type who needs the attention.”

  His comment was so touching that it made me feel maudlin, and feeling maudlin made me feel belligerent. “A guy I used to be involved with used to criticize me for not dressing slutty enough,” I said. “He said I wasn’t much of a girl. He’d probably like what I’ve got on, but the little jerk is dead now.” I dug around in my bag for the fare. The driver’s eyes flashed urgently in his rearview.

  At the party, I quickly found the bar. I was working on getting drunk when I noticed that a pretty, snooty-looking boy was staring at me, his large eyes glowing with cheap, carnivorous ardor. I found that pleasing, especially coming from someone who looked at least ten years younger than I, but there was also something a little unnerving about it. It wasn’t exactly lust; it was a look of stunted idealism, a shallow romanticism that could only be disappointed at—even appalled by—the substance that lurks under any fancy facade, including mine.

  “You look like a movie star,” he said.

  I mumbled abashedly.

  “How did you get your look?”

  “It’s just a wig.” Perplexed and embarrassed to think he might be making fun of me, I looked at the gift table, upon which guests had impishly heaped dildos, vibrators, carrots, daikons, and cucumbers. “My,” I said, “look at that preponderance of elongated objects.”

  “What?”

  He looked at me askance; I immediately launched a meaningless exchange of questions and answers: “Where are you from?” “How long did you live there?” “Do you like San Francisco?”

  “What is this, an interview?” he snapped.

  “I was hoping it was an exchange of friendly noises,” I said.

  “I’m going to get a drink,” he said. “I’m going to get a drink now.” He turned on his haughty heel. Already the substance had squished out and repelled him! Oh, well. I circulated, working hard on my drunken stupor. I was sitting with a jovial group of women when he approached me again. He had one of the impish daikons in his hand; he sat down and rapped the vegetable on the table and said, “I’ve got a point to make here.”

  I gazed into space and murmured, “I hear you.”

  After that we communicated more smoothly. We chatted about rock stars, haircuts, hair dye, and whether or not there is such a thing as national character. His name was Frederick. He said he had come to this party because his friend Al had given the birthday girl a computer, and he wanted Frederick, who was, it seemed, a particularly esoteric interface designer, to show her how to create her own web site. “He begged me to come,” said Frederick. “He even offered to pay me.” He sighed as if this request were a distasteful burden.

  I tried to think of something to say, and while I was trying, a blond girl with a Polaroid camera came and asked us if she could take our picture. She was drunk, and she gave off a peculiar chemical shimmer that was sweet and lurid and had a seductive little suck to it. We assumed self-conscious expressions, and she took the picture. She handed it to me with a small, sharp smile and walked away.

  Frederick and I decided to share a cab home. In the cab he sat very close to me, and that artificial closeness made me sense acutely how alone I would feel when I said good night and entered the long, dark hallway of my apartment. I interrupted our banal conversation by taking his hand; I was surprised when he gave me some sweet, gentle pressure.

  “Frederick,” I said. “Would you like to come in for a minute?”

  “Sure,” he said. “But I won’t stay for long.”

  I said “Okay” very softly.

  I offered him something to drink, but I only had rum and a few ounces of Jägermeister. We sat on the floor and shared the ounces.

  “This is really weird,” I said. “I haven’t had anybody in my apartment like this for over a year.” He looked skeptical. My cat came into the room. I told him I’d had her for ten years. I said I was concerned about her weight because I’d recently taken in and tamed a feral kitten, who was probably hiding under the bed, and since kittens need to eat a lot I was compelled to overfeed the cat so she wouldn’t feel neglected.

  “She isn’t fat,” Frederick said. “I think she’s pretty.”

  Maybe he was nice after all. I raised one of my booted feet and coquettishly poked my pointed heel into his stomach. His face underwent a funny shift of expression. He kissed me. We lay on the floor, and I mauled him, pausing to gently touch my nose against his face, neck, and slight chest. He told me he was twenty-six. I told him I was thirty-nine. I said I hoped that my age didn’t bother him. I said that sometimes it bothered me and other times I looked forward to old-bagness, when I could stop worrying about sex and be like a kid again. I sat on him and lightly bounced. He said he thought I was a very interesting person and that he would like to see me in another context; he asked if I thought I’d like to “hang out” with someone so much younger. “I don’t know,” I said. “I might feel self-conscious, and besides, we might not like each other.” I bent and kissed him again, cupping his head the way I would hold a baby’s head to keep it from falling. “Before we left the party, Darleen told me something about you,” I said. “She said you were really good but that you wouldn’t call me the next day or the day after that or the day after that.”

  “And that was all right with you?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “It was.”

  He stared at me.

  We rolled around some more. He felt very different from the way he talked. He felt fragile and tentative, but with a muscular hot streak running up his center. He vacillated between full presence and no presence at all; his present moments were animal and nervous, his absence was like a snake that you can feel, but not see, moving past you. He made me feel submissive and high-handed at the same time. “Man,” I said, “you are so sweet.”

  In response, he kissed me, and then pulled back so that my mouth was left open; he moved in again as if he were going to kiss me, and then, when I responded, pulled away again. Through slit eyes I noted his smirk. I recalled that my last boyfriend, who was also in his twenties, had told me that he sometimes liked to pull out of a kiss so that the girl’s tongue would be sticking out and looking funny. Fondly and fairly hard, I bit Frederick’s lips. He sat up and, out of nowhere, began to talk mean shit about a girl who had been at the party.

  “She’s nothing but a dog,” he said. “She likes to be ordered around. Like, go into the corner, sit up, stay, wait, beg.”

  “Yeah, well, there’s a lot of that going around,” I said. I paused, looking up at him. “How do you know that about her?” I asked. “Did you screw her?”

  His smirk wobbled uncertainly. “Uh, no. But that’s what all her performances are about. Didn’t you notice those pictures of her on the wall tonight? With the whips?”

  “No. I’m surprised. I would’ve thought emotional pain was more her thing.” I took him by his shoulders and put him on his back again. I wondered if he had brought up this girl’s dogness in order to indirectly implicate me in it. I felt hurt for a second and then decided that I didn’t care; it seemed the evening could sustain some dog influence. “Actually, I don’t know about this whole San Francisco S-M yoga-class crap,” I said. “Like, watch me up on stage getting my butt whipped. I mean, it’s so schematic or something.” I lay on top of him and rubbed my lower lip gently against the grain of his left eyebrow. He stroked my back and my head. He found my lips with his hand and insinuated his finger into my mouth.

  I sat up and straddled him. “People are fucking crazy,” I said. “This girl I know once had a thing with this guy through E-mail. Finally, they met, and she went home with him. He made out with her and did all kinds of stuff, and then he just rolled over and went to sleep, except he had a big hard-on. The next night the same thing happened. After that she never heard from him. Then she ran into him and he called her a cunt.”

  His expression as I told this story became soft, even humane. He also looked as if I’d called him on some
thing—which perhaps, in some muddled way, I had. He put his hands on my hips and said, “I like you.” He looked into the air with that strange, tender face. “But I’m not sure why.”

  “I like you too,” I said, reaching for his belt buckle. “And I know what you mean about not knowing why. Actually, you remind me of a real prick I used to be involved with about ten years ago—not that you’re a prick or anything. He was weird in a lot of ways. He was the only man I’ve ever known who didn’t like blow jobs.”

  “I don’t like them much, either,” Frederick said. “Because most girls aren’t any good at them. Except the last girl—and I think that was a guy.”

  “What about if you’re in love?” I asked.

  “The love thing—that’s different,” he said. “That doesn’t have anything to do with technique.”

  “For me it does. If I’m in love, I’m pretty much going to like what the person does. But I guess men are different.” I was beginning to think he might be a prick, but his prickness seemed minor key and strangely weightless; I didn’t think he would hurt me. So I sucked his dick. When I stopped he said he liked my tongue. “It’s a pointy little guy,” I said. “Probably from constantly reaching out for, um, things.”

  “Really?” He looked mortified.

  “Uh-huh.” I ran one hand down his front, then his thigh. “You’re so frail,” I murmured. “But you have this nice masculine turgor thing happening too.”

  “You keep using words I don’t know.”

  “Oh, ‘turgor’? I just learned that myself. It means the tension inside plants that gives them form. It’s nice, don’t you think?”

  He sat up. “What do you do for a living?”

  “I teach at Berkeley. I teach poetry.”

  I imagined myself as I would be the next day—sitting at my kitchen table with a headache, reading my students’ ghastly poems. I thought of my students with a sorrowful pang. I imagined them in my living room, watching me as I lay with this too young person. “Look at me,” I would say “This is what I’m really like. I have nothing for you. I’m sorry.” The hell of it was, if such a scene could actually take place, my students would only see it as evidence of my thrilling humanity; it would quite possibly raise me higher in their esteem.