by Lisa Alther
But the mommies always began demanding that he wear their new baby in a sling across his chest while they strolled in Central Park. The saddest sight of all for him was that of a young man trying to jog while pushing a baby stroller. His mother had always taken care of her household and her children, welcoming Ben’s father home at night to a hot meal and a snooze on the couch in front of the TV. But Ben’s wives had each expected him—however exhausted from pumping stomachs all day long—to give their children baths and read them inane bedtime stories involving talking animals. Young women now were spoiled princesses, demanding not only their own credit cards but also assistance with rearing the children and doing the housework. How had so many men allowed this to occur?
He asked himself why things hadn’t worked out with Jessie back in the Roosevelt days. If he couldn’t have a wife who would take care of him, at least he could have picked one who could take care of herself. He remembered their groping around inside each other’s scrubs in supply closets all over the hospital—and visits to her tiny apartment across the street in a redbrick Italianate building with arched windows, a bracketed cornice, and a rooftop campanile. Apparently her parents had lived in this same building when her father was at Roosevelt after the war. She claimed to have been conceived on the fourth floor—though Ben found it hard to imagine that her chilly mother would ever have parted her knees for any man. Jessie used to say that she was like a monarch butterfly, returning to the site of her hatching. Both he and she had usually been so exhausted by their inhuman schedules at the hospital that they merely lay down in each other’s arms and slept chastely.
The truth was, Ben had never really wanted to be a doctor. As a child, he had received at Christmas and birthdays tiny scrubs and miniature medical instruments, which he had halfheartedly employed on his sisters’ dolls, while his sisters shrieked in protest. At dinner every night his father had described in sickening detail the operations he had performed that day. But at Amherst, Ben had been more interested in archaeology—other times and distant places, not the urgent here and now of medicine—although he did take the premed prerequisites. In a feeble gesture toward self-determination, he had fled to Steamboat, Colorado, after graduation, teaching skiing by day and waiting tables at night. But gradually he had acceded to his father’s wishes, taking the MCATs, applying to med schools, and somehow managing to get accepted at Cornell.
Medicine had proved an okay way to earn a living. But he would love to retire now and volunteer on some archaeological digs before he became too infirm to wield a shovel. Though that wouldn’t be possible anytime soon with four alimony payments and six children to put through college. What in the world had he been thinking? He hadn’t been thinking. He just hadn’t known how to keep his pecker in his pocket.
It was probably because Jessie and he had had no time for romance that theirs hadn’t flourished. When the gossip reached him that she was with a woman, he had refused to believe it. And now he felt certain he could persuade her to change her mind. She was perfect for him: She had her own income, and she was well past menopause. And women rarely turned him down if he put his mind to it.
* * *
—
Jessie dodged the lines of embarking passengers and their luggage as she reboarded the Amphitrite. She walked fast down the central corridor on the first deck, which the crew called “I-95,” thinking about Ben and his clumsy come-on. Even if good sense told her he was nothing but a sexual opportunist, it still cheered her up to think that he might find her attractive, since she currently felt half-dead from having so recently accompanied three loved ones to the brink of extinction. Sexual predation and assault were one thing, but a little pointless flirtation was the Tabasco sauce on the gumbo of life. Criminalizing it was like exterminating the rats in your cellar with a Molotov cocktail.
She had several male friends, and she hoped she could convert Ben into one of those. First, though, all the men had had to recover from their incredulity that some women might actually prefer to make love to other women, with no penis in sight. But for many women there was an undeniable relief in being able to focus on mutual pleasure, rather than on the capricious hydraulics of a penis.
Her only once-male friend who understood this without a struggle was a trans surgical nurse in Burlington named Elle. She said when potential boyfriends learned that she had happily forfeited her penis, most searched for an exit door right away. She also said that when her body had appeared to be male, people had praised her every utterance. But once she transitioned, she was constantly challenged and criticized. She had been forced too late to face the fact that being a woman wasn’t all it had been cracked up to be.
Jessie was just grateful that transitioning hadn’t been an option when she was young. She had been a hard-core tomboy and might have been tempted by that option. But she would have hated to miss out on being a lesbian.
Reaching the clinic, Jessie discovered a young man with ginger curls sprawled on the linoleum outside the doorway. He looked like one of the Rolling Stones before alcohol and drugs had transformed them into elderly haints.
He peered up at her through bloodshot eyes and croaked, “Is the clinic open?”
“I’m just now opening it. But what’s happened to you?”
“I think I’ve broken something.” His voice was almost a whisper.
Jessie unlocked the door and helped him to his feet. Inside, she handed him a patient questionnaire and a pen. He sat down gingerly in a chair in the waiting area and began to fill it out. After he returned it to her, she escorted him into an examining room. They sat down. “So what do you think you’ve broken, Mr. Kincaid?”
He blushed deep red. “Uh. Is it possible to break your…uh…penis?”
“Well, there’s no bone there. But you can rupture one of the tubes that cause erections. Did you hear a popping sound?”
He nodded miserably.
“Did you lose your erection?”
He nodded.
“Are you bruised and swollen down there?”
He nodded.
“I’d better take a look.” She handed him a robe. “Remove your trousers and underwear and drape yourself with this. I’ll be back shortly.”
Amy had arrived at the reception desk, and the waiting area was filling up with patients. Jessie motioned for Amy to accompany her to the examining room. Male patients always got nervous when she examined their genitalia. She tried her best to help them understand that their penises were of no more interest to her than were hernias. In fact, the great unspoken secret was that most women loved their men in spite of their wheedling appendages. The idea that a woman could be seduced by texting her a photo of your erect penis made most women howl with nervous laughter. Given that a quarter of all women had been raped, it was as tone-deaf as texting a photo of a noose to an African-American. It was almost as clueless as the porn industry’s depictions of what two women do in bed together.
Jessie removed the robe from the young man’s lap and discovered a genital area gone entirely black-and-blue, and a swollen penis the shape of a small papaya. “Oh my! That must really hurt. We need to get you into surgery in Dubai as soon as possible.”
“Surgery?” he gasped. “Could I lose my penis?”
“No. Don’t worry. A urologist needs to do an MRI or an ultrasound to see if you’ve damaged your urethra. And he’ll have to take a few stitches to patch up your torn tube. But you’ll soon be fine. However, I’m afraid the ship can’t wait for you. I hope you took out trip insurance? Go to your cabin and pack your things. Get your passport from the purser and ask Guest Services to arrange a flight home for you. Bring your valuables and medications and meet me on the quay. Your cabin steward will carry your luggage out.”
Jessie paged Ben. He was still in the gold souk, buying mementos for his daughters. She explained what had happened. He replied that he would contact a urologist in Dubai
and page her back with instructions.
* * *
—
As Rusty threw his belongings into his suitcase, he was upset over his injury. But he was especially upset that he would have to abandon Gail Savage without an explanation. They had really hit it off, and he had glimpsed the promise of at last recovering from Irene. Back at his cabin after the Arabian Nights Gala, Gail had claimed she wanted his help with her golf swing. He had stood behind her and guided the lift of her arms, the angle of her wrists, the twist of her hips as she employed an imaginary club. One thing had led to another, and soon she was teaching him positions from the Kama Sutra. He had to admit that they were more engaging than variations on golf strokes. But then Gail had insisted on trying what she called “the Reverse Cowgirl,” and all hell had broken loose. Still, he realized that he owed Gail his life. If he hadn’t met her, he would probably have ducked into that nook where the Commodore’s Cuff Links were stored and jumped overboard.
Gail had said she was on a world cruise. Maybe he could reboard the ship at an upcoming port. For the first time since Irene had dumped him, he found himself grinning. His aching groin was proof that he was back in the saddle again!
* * *
—
Pedro entered Mr. Kincaid’s room to retrieve his luggage. As he picked up the suitcase and carry-on, he tried to figure out what was wrong with this man who seemed so much like a little boy. Here he was on a trip that cost more than Pedro earned in two years, but he just sat around looking miserable. He and Mr. Kincaid were probably the same age, but Pedro already had a wife and two small children back in the Philippines. He saw them for only two months a year, in between cruises. Sometimes, if a passenger gave him a phone card as a tip, he would call home from a port. Otherwise, he stayed on this ship for ten months at a time, working twelve hours a day, seven days a week. Any time off was spent in the crew bar or in the small cabin he shared with three other Filipino stewards.
It was a difficult life, but he was grateful to have work that allowed him to support his family. Before the Spaniards arrived, his ancestors had sailed all around Southeast Asia on merchant vessels. During the Spanish occupation, they had been forced to sail for Spain. In the nineteenth century, they had worked on American whaling vessels. His father had also worked on cruise ships. Pedro was proud to uphold this family tradition, however lonely and demanding.
Pedro was like a second father to many of the younger Filipino workers. He tried to explain to them the need to act respectful toward passengers, even when you despised them. That was how you earned tips and phone cards. But the younger men had a hard time faking it. Behind the guests’ backs they called them “Coneheads,” after a family of aliens on American TV who consumed vast quantities of food, including cleaning fluid and insulation.
But Pedro had even changed his name to maximize his tips. The guests couldn’t pronounce or remember his real name, Gualterio. It meant “strong warrior” in his own language, and his mother had picked it on purpose to inspire him to be brave and bold. But he told the guests just to call him Pedro. A few insisted on learning how to pronounce Gualterio. He always put extra foil-wrapped chocolates on their pillows when he turned down their covers at night. But most guests were relieved just to call him Pedro and slip him more free phone cards.
Pedro watched over his younger countrymen during all their foolishness. Because there weren’t many women on board, the stewards, cleaners, and waiters, those who worked in maintenance and in the engine room and the kitchens, didn’t often get them. The women chose the officers, who could offer them single rooms at night and buy them perfume at the boutiques. Some crew resorted to chi-chi men, who would let other men screw them. But most just drank too many cheap Coronas in the crew bar. Some brought cocaine and pot on board in the soles of their shoes. What they couldn’t sell to passengers, they used themselves. They spent their free time in a stupor, reminiscing about the whores in Rio who, they claimed, loved Filipino men because the Filipinos didn’t treat them like whores.
He would laugh and say, “Don’t fool yourselves, boys. They want your money, just like whores anywhere else.”
Chapter 4
Too Close to the Ground
Through the clinic porthole Jessie could see the Muscat harbor, surrounded by jagged gunmetal gray mountains. On a cliff stood the tumbled stone ruins of a Portuguese fort from colonial days, when Muscat had become wealthy from the transport to the Middle East of slaves captured in East Africa. The buildings of the city were low and bright white, with crenellated walls and wooden balconies. Palm trees swayed in a salty breeze.
Across the street at the entrance to the souk stood men dressed in collarless white gowns and round embroidered caps. There were almost no women in sight. Probably they had all stayed home to bleach, starch, and iron those blindingly white gowns. The few women Jessie did spot wore long black abayas, with veils across their faces. White reflected heat and black trapped it, so it made sense to Jessie that women in these Islamic desert countries were required to wear black body bags while their menfolk wore airy white gowns.
Still, that morning Jessie had watched on the sputtering Internet some Victoria’s Secret models doing a fashion show in China. They wore patterned stockings on their flamingo legs, with skimpy lace thongs and bras and garter belts, all roped together by spiderwebs of black leather straps, like bondage gear. Comparing them to these Arab women in their black pup tents, she was hard-pressed to say which group was in reality less free.
Farther down the quay she could see the turquoise and golden mushroom columns of the ceremonial palace of the Omani sultan. The gay grapevine back home had long maintained that he kept an all-male harem and a platoon of handsome young bodyguards. In addition, he had had an opera house constructed in Muscat, which the grapevine insisted was proof positive of his orientation. The grapevine also claimed that homosexuals from throughout the Arab world were vying to immigrate to Oman and volunteer for the harem. If you weren’t a member of the harem or one of the bodyguards, you could be imprisoned in Oman for being gay. But at least you couldn’t be executed, as in other sharia-ruled countries.
Passengers from the Amphitrite, dressed in pastel cruise gear, were milling around the entrance to the souk, like sheep about to be fleeced. For a moment Jessie thought she spotted the blond ponytail of Gail Savage. Then she remembered that she had quarantined Gail in her cabin with her ill husband. But she realized that she had forgotten to alert the purser. She picked up the house phone, dialed the purser, and asked him to deactivate the keys to room 10024. If the Savages took a notion to disobey her, they wouldn’t be able to get back into their room. She would be notified and could have them put off the ship.
A man standing behind the counter cleared his throat. As Jessie looked up, he asked, “Are you open yet?”
“Yes, we are. How can I help you?” The middle-aged man had a dark five o’clock shadow and a snake tattoo winding up his muscled right forearm.
“I’ve sprained my ankle. Maybe broken it.” His accent was some variety of British. English, Irish, Scottish, Australian, Canadian, South African—that was about as specific as Jessie could get.
She handed him a clipboard. As he filled out the questionnaire, she went into the exam room and set up the digital X-ray machine. Back at the counter, she looked over his information, ascertaining that Rodney Mullins was from Leeds. A Yorkshire accent. She gestured for him to follow her. He sat on the examining table and pulled up his chino pant leg. As she removed his deck shoe, she could see that he was grimacing. The ankle was swollen and purple. She poked it with her fingertips and carefully moved the foot here and there to check its range of motion. He had walked to the clinic, so it was doubtful the ankle was broken. Nevertheless, she decided to x-ray it, unable to rely on her own intuition, as her grandfather would have done.
“How did this happen?” she asked as she waited for the images to
appear on her monitor.
He was carefully replacing his shoe. “I fell down some steps on the observation deck as we were approaching Muscat.”
“It must have been crowded up there.”
“I was trying to get some photos. Everyone else was, too, so there was some serious jostling.”
“Well, the good news is that your ankle isn’t broken. I’ll wrap it. You should go back to your cabin and elevate your leg with pillows. Every hour or so, ice the ankle for ten minutes. I’ll give you some crutches and some acetaminophen for the pain.”
* * *
—
As Rodney swung out of the clinic on his new crutches, he wondered why he hadn’t told the nice doctor with the lavender stethoscope around her neck that he had been pushed down those steps. An attractive American woman with a blond ponytail and turquoise eyes had accused him of stealing her place at the railing. This wasn’t true, because he had been positioned there for a good half hour before she arrived. He guessed he hadn’t mentioned it because he didn’t want to seem like a wimp, elbowed aside by a woman.
Rodney had acquired his snake tattoo during a drunken night in Singapore while on R&R from Vietnam. Afterward, his fellow soldiers started calling him “Serp,” for serpent. Upon leaving the British army, he had worked as a jewel thief. His boss, who used his own resemblance to David Niven to gain entrance to fancy restaurants, would zero in on people who wore expensive jewelry and would give Serp their details. Serp’s job had been to break into their houses, open their safes, and relieve them of the jewels.