FOR MY BEAUTIFUL WIFE
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
NOVELS
The Basic Eight
Watch Your Mouth
Adverbs
Why We Broke Up
We Are Pirates
NOT NOVELS
Girls Standing on Lawns
Hurry Up and Wait
Weather, Weather
AS LEMONY SNICKET
[list available on request]
CONTENTS
Author’s Note
Begin Reading
A Note on the Author
—The opening of Rilke’s “Third Duino Elegy” is from Gary Miranda’s elegant and illuminating translations, published in a highly recommended volume by Tavern Books, and appears courtesy the translator. The author changed one word, with apologies to same.
—Further thanks are due to Lisa Brown, Charlotte Sheedy, Nancy Miller, Susan Rich, Oscar Hijuelos, Michelle Tea, Andrew Sean Greer, Rebecca Stead, Ayelet Waldman, Dana Reinhardt, and some other early readers (hello, girls) who wish to remain anonymous.
—This is a work of fiction.
Let me put it this way: this is how much I think about sex. Draw a number line, with zero is, you never think about sex and ten is, it’s all you think about, and while you are drawing the line, I am thinking about sex. Brush up against me in the hall at school, any girl I am thinking of, the way she smells walking behind her up the ugly staircase, trying to keep it together while my whole body rattles like a squirrel in a tin can. To couple up with them, to capture their whole bodies under a blanket with enough light to see the pleasure of what we are doing. Marinated with it, the snap and the sigh of longing to be inside all of her. It’s a story that keeps telling itself to me, my own crackling need in this world lit only by girls who might kiss me, like a flower, like a flytrap, the delicious sex we would have if we weren’t in the idiotic marathon of going to class. Oh, good. Calculus. This will clear everything up.
• •
Waking up in the morning, miserable with bad weather. School in front of me, the whole day, like a wall I’m going to bang my head against. Think of the girls, I tell myself, like cookies in the oven to lure me out of bed. Think of how pretty they are. Don’t you want to see them, Cole? Come on, brush your teeth.
• •
Through a rip in a girl’s jeans I see a little light fuzz on her knee. And then the next day it’s smooth and gone. Naked, shaving her legs. They shave their legs naked, right? Sitting there in jeans and naked in my head. The razor moving up up her legs. Tell us why your grades have suffered.
• •
Let me put it this way: let’s say you had an arm. Let’s say it was an arm, instead, that got stiff and stuck out suddenly and unsightly, and calming it down felt amazing. Tell me you would not think, not wonder what the big deal was to ask people if they could just take a minute and take care of that arm for you.
• •
I look around the cafeteria and think, line us all up, from the person who had an orgasm most recently, to who had one the longest time ago. Now line us up again, from happiest to that girl clenching up alone in tears in a furious sweater. It’s the same lineup, isn’t it?
• •
Wish I could explain, how these things feel like seduction, even though I know they aren’t. If you rumple my hair and leave your hand for a minute on my neck. If you sit and put one of your legs up on something even if you’re in jeans. If you lick something off your finger. If you put on lipstick. If you rub your own bare arm. If you bend down for any reason to pick something up off the ground. If you talk to me.
• •
—Give me the details.
Alec always says this. My best friend, waiting on the screen when I get home from a date and am back up in my room taking my good shirt off, a pending always request.
—What, like what?
—Like always.
—You want to know what movie we saw?
—Shut up. You know.
—Tell me.
—The dirty parts. The sex is the details I mean.
So that’s what I type. There are love stories galore, and we all know them. This isn’t that. The story I’m typing is all the dirty parts.
• •
Because I’m on an adventure. I’m not happy ever after with my first girl. You don’t see a movie and say, well now I’ve seen a movie. You see different ones. You try them and keep trying. Because so much of the rest is bullshit nothing. There’s friends, laughing on the weekends, nice as they are to be around. Not enough. Your teachers gesture toward the future but they’re on the payroll. Cross-country, the coach pushing us further for no reason but sweat and maybe a trophy to get dusty on the bookshelf. The best songs become a thing you’re tired of, parents snap at you and the muddle of the rest of it, all of us unable to be everything to each other all the time every day. But this rushing flesh together is something I know. Girl biting my shoulder with two fingers inside her and my thumb smooth-smooth-moving in a quiet pulse, I get this. If it could all move this way, all these bodies I see, looking me in my eye and moving your hand up and down until I come, if we could all come together always like this, we would chase no different joy.
• •
It doesn’t matter how many girls I’ve slept with. The number doesn’t matter, and it doesn’t matter that some of them, for months, were more like lovers, a bigger deal, and that some of them, for a night if by a night we mean three hours, it was more like a snack. It’s not the number that matters. What matters is that, to me, it doesn’t feel like enough.
Eleven, is the number.
• •
It took me forever to figure: she’s pressing against me, there’s no way she can’t feel me hard against her, and she’s not pulling away. But she’s not saying anything either, she’s not rolling back to take something off. We’re just here, for hours it feels like, this seesaw of wondering, trying not to ruin it, what’s going to happen next.
She won’t say, do you want to? This is something you have to say. I learned, trial and too many errors, the girls, almost all of them all the time, need to be given the idea. They’re already thinking about it, but they need the idea advanced. Let me put it to you this way.
• •
It sounds pushy, and I know it does. But it’s only pushy inside me sometimes. It’s not like I’m violent with it. I’ve never forced a girl. While we were having sex they all, definitely, wanted it to happen.
Afterwards, though, they felt bad about it sometimes.
• •
—Give me the details.
What details can I give another guy? Describing it isn’t anything like it is. You can grab your own arm, anything soft. It’s not like your hands on her breasts, shirt hiked up quick and bra unclasped off someplace. What could I tell Alec about it?
Everything, it turns out.
• •
—Hold it like a candy bar.
We are both giggling. She wipes her hand, sweaty, on the sheet and clutches me again.
—Ow. No. Like a candy bar.
—You know, it’s not really helpful because I don’t go around holding candy bars all the time. Or do this. Show me.
—OK, like—
—Oh. OK. This is like a candy bar? OK. And now, what next do I do?
—Now eat it.
I am pulsing, still laughing, close. It will happen quick and surprise her.
• •
The first time a girl told me to ejaculate on her face, I was fourteen. She looked right at me when she said it. She wasn’t talking to me, though. She was the star of a movie, but those maybe aren’t the right words. It’s not really a movie. It’s six minutes long and the title on the screen is “Brun
ette Deep Throat Blowjob With Facial.” I don’t even know if you’d call it a movie, and you wouldn’t really call the girl the star. I don’t know what you’d call her.
• •
Alec and I send each other what we’re watching. I don’t know how it started and we never never talk about it. The only thing we do is reply one word if we like it. Hot. It’s like one of those things that predict what band you’ll like. He figured out I like stuff where the girl talks dirty. I figured out he liked two guys and one girl.
Everybody thinks something is hot.
• •
Glasses, pigtails, busty, fat, shaved, browsing and then searching. On their knees looking up at the camera, waiting on the bed while I sit on mine, scrolling for suggestions for further viewing, captioned below. If you came watching this, you might also like two girls getting fucked in a car. Why yes I would.
• •
Pants around the ankles, I learned this quick—take the ten seconds to not keep them that way. It’s one thing to tuck your shirt up out of your way, but pants end up locked around your shoes and you have to Frankenstein-walk someplace with your dick out hard in front of you like a doorknob. She always laughs and then you have to laugh too and pretend that you also are out of the mood for a few minutes. Don’t let it happen. I got to taking off my shoes the minute I’m hanging alone with a girl. Ready to go. Just in case.
• •
It’s not like you’re even that hot, is what Jeremy says, Alec says it and other guys too, other versions of the same mystified complaint. And you get so much sex, while we all try and fail, and are in the parking lot watching you and the girl grab some chips from the store, on the way to go out into the nighttime and fuck and, what I’m wondering is, are they all really trying? Or are they just thinking about it, staring alone at a dream that pops into no one else’s head. Because this isn’t that. You can dream up anything you want, but for actually having sex with actually a girl you have to move. You can think, you can know, that girls are a mystery, but put it this way: there are things to do, moves you can make. Meet her, talk to her, laugh with her, nuzzle, handhold, walk somewhere, eat something, by now you’ve kissed a lot. Kiss more, kiss wilder, kiss the neck, collarbone. Rub against, rub with, hands on the bare waist, the back, the breasts. Guide her hands, the first time you come with her, with the gasp and meeting her eyes. Go down on her. Go down on her naked. Go down on her with fingers inside. Go down on her holding her legs open. Keep asking if she likes it, keep asking what else you can do, until she gets the idea and asks you back. You’re naked by now. Sit up naked and rest her head in your lap. It feels so good and say so. Come hard. Kiss her right after to say, of course we still kiss, of course we are going to keep doing this. You can do this. Move slow the first five times. Find a way in. Fuck fuck fuck. Buy her a stuffed animal.
• •
—Cole, you’re getting a rep.
Sophomore year Kristen tells me this. She is sometimes my friend, definitely the reason I’m not flunking Chemistry, fearless with jokes, saying this next to me on a bench after sitting down like it was a professional meeting, a therapy session.
—A rep?
—It’s short for reputation.
—Um, thanks for explaining that.
—You are going after girls.
—What?
—You heard me, Cole. Too many—
—Too many girlfriends? Is there some allotment? National statistic?
—It’s not girlfriends, Cole. You go after them and people are talking.
—People?
—And you don’t treat them like people.
—What?
—The girls. You sleep around.
I look at her. She’s not bad looking, although the hair, somebody should intervene. She’s part of a small pack of girls I’d never tangle with. Last year at the Holiday Formal they were standing outside the ballroom and I thought they were protesting it, so fierce were their faces with not having a good time. She is, I’m realizing, a good spy for me, a weather report from rooms I’m not allowed in.
—OK, I’m not a virgin, yeah.
—I’m not talking about sex, Cole. I’m talking about how it’s one girl, and then it’s another. You’re getting a rep.
—OK.
—OK what?
—OK what do you want me to say, Kristen?
I’m on the bench for no reason, the bus having tossed me at school early. But, across the horrible lawn, three girls are practicing a dance something. She can’t even see it, right across from us, three delicious girls, and if I went up and told one of them that I liked how she moved—
Kristen is looking at me like I’m a plume of smoke in the kitchen, right before you yell fire! —You don’t care that people think it’s sleazy. You’re going to keep up with it.
—What’s wrong with going out with girls? Go yell at girls, if you think it’s wrong. Why does it bother you anyway, it sounds like you’re—
I’m smart enough to stop talking but not smart enough, not quick enough.
—You think I’m jealous?
We’re both laughing now, but only a little bit. —No, but Kristen, why do you care?
—You can be infuriating, Cole. I’m trying to help you.
She walks off. She’s a virgin, I’m realizing. Some guy is going to go after her and then she won’t wonder if the sex is worth it, because she’ll be busy, instead of analyzing me, having sex. But not, for sure, with her hair like that.
• •
Arya liked to read a lot. We’d go one round and then lie on the floor, her parents’ clock ticking, and I’d hand her her book and I’d take one she’d recommended. Finish the chapter, start up with her cheek and neck and ears until she’d sort of sigh and find a bookmark and round two. I read a lot with her, that’s one thing. Ballad of the Sad Café. Not bad, but she liked it better than me.
• •
Amelie, she was crazy breathless Jesus Christ beautiful. In the light blue dress stepping out of the mall through a revolving door it was light and miraculous like a moonbeam in a Japanese ghost story video game. Her hair was wispy on the back of her smooth neck, I didn’t even want to touch her, it was so beautiful. But, you know, I did.
• •
I taught Alana how to skip rocks, with my hand over her hand with the stone in it, like that. Also on a park bench, dark without wind kicking dirt on us, I taught her to make me come, basically the same way. You’re getting the hang of it. You’re a natural.
• •
Doze off after, wake up, and Adrienne’s mad I was asleep. I’m supposed to, I guess, be staring into her eyes and saying something. But I’m so comfortable with you, is what I tell her instead. She’s halfway OK with it. I lean against her and perform a big snore. She’s still halfway. I kiss her harder than she thinks will happen right then. She curves one leg over mine. More than halfway now, but I still don’t know what I did or how I got out of it.
• •
—Why do you always take your shoes off right when we get inside?
• •
I read their messages too much for clues. My sister’s watching TV, Amelie sends me, and it means what? She’ll be home all night? She’s snoopy? Snitching? Doesn’t like me?
• •
We fed the ducks together, but they ruined it all, so aggressive it wasn’t fun, surrounding us and squawking so loud we just ended up dumping it all on the ground, OK OK, take it, asshole birds. So I get that, if you act too hungry it’s not fun anymore. Calm down, sit and wait, you’ll get something. But you know, sometimes you’re just really really fucking hungry.
• •
Need to find somewhere. My parents are home. Her mom’s home. It’s cold out. Cars are cramped, and we don’t have the car anyway. Dory’s having a party, but we can’t go upstairs. Fool around a little at the bus stop, in a thing that used to be a payphone. My hands cold. Give up, or try to sneak me through the window. C’mon c’mon. That hotel there, it ca
n’t be full, those empty beds no one is using. Fuck.
• •
I say to Kristen, —OK, can I ask you something?
She closes her eyes. —I’m afraid already.
—Stop. Tell me. Uncode it for me.
—It’s decode, Cole. What?
—OK, if a girl—
—I knew it. I’m scared.
—If she says, nothing the first month. Like for the first month we go out, she doesn’t want—
—I get it, Cole.
—OK. Which is cool, right? I mean, it’s fine.
—A girl making a choice about her own body, yes. That’s cool, Cole. I’m sooo glad you’re fine with that.
—I am. But. Second date, we’re kissing and she moves my hand to her shirt.
—Ew. Jesus, why are you even—
—OK, but just tell me, decode it, does that mean—
She’s trying to cover her eyes and ears at once. —Shut up shut up shut up—
—Kristen, how am I going to learn—
—Shut up.
—C’mon.
—You c’mon. Where were your hands, anyway, before, in this story, she moved them—
—They were, you know, like on her waist or whatever.
—Or whatever. You make me not want to be on Planet Earth, Cole. You force it.
—What?
—Don’t what. You do. You force it, Cole.
—I don’t force people.
—What do you do then?
Now she sounds interested. She is looking at me scientifically, like a professional in her stupid sweater, like I’m the lab animal she might not have to cut open after all. She says it again. —What do you do then?
—Well, like I said. She says nothing for the first month, so nothing’s happening.
—But you want it to.
—Yeah, I will admit that. I want it to happen, but I’m not going to force it to happen, no. I mean, I think we both want it. I think. It feels like it.
—Aha.
—What aha? She’s the one who moved my hands on her. It happens to her. It happens to both of us.
—Bullshit.
She looks around and lowers her voice. —You forced it.
All the Dirty Parts Page 1