Girls

by Nic Kelman

  The porn movie industry grosses more annually worldwide than the legitimate movie industry.

  And still porn stars say they “make their real money” on tour — all cash.

  Also all cash are the strip clubs and most hookers.

  All told, in the United States, the sex industry grosses more than the domestic revenue of the tobacco and alcohol industries put together. All told, the American male spends more money annually per capita on the sex industry than on taking his wife to the movies and buying video games for his children. All told, the American male is clearly not getting what he wants at home.

  She gives you a ring or a bracelet that says “Peace,” or, “Dream more.” And you wear it. You wear it even though your friends see it and say, “What the hell is that?” and, embarrassed, because you know exactly how ridiculous it is, you say, “She gave it to me,” and then they say, “Oh,” and leave it at that because now it makes sense. Yes, you wear it all the time. But you know it will not work. That is what she is for.

  “‘Agamemnon offers you worthy recompense if you change from your anger.’” — Odysseus to Achilles, Iliad 9:260

  A mother catches you looking at her daughter. She scowls, she knows what you are thinking because she knows what her husband is thinking when he looks at his daughter’s friends. Yet she scowls more when she sees her daughter returning the gaze.

  Apollo and Daphne. Merlin and Nimue. Othello and Desdemona. JFK and Marilyn. At what point did enchantment become sin?

  I don’t remember when exactly but it must have been soon after we’d met, you taught me that if you fold a dollar bill lengthwise and then flatten it out again, a vending machine will almost always accept it.

  Goddamn you for that. There are so many people I have forgotten, people I liked much more than you, people that I never even knew I knew until someone else mentions them and I wonder what happened to them because I liked them. But not you. You I must now remember in every airport, in every gymnasium, in every stairwell. Thanks to your little trick, I can never forget you. Goddamn you for that.

  Love, lust, passion, longing, a sight for sore eyes, tempted by, weakness for, ache for, pant for, hurt for, languish for, cry for, itch for, wild for, yearning, craving, thirsting, coveting, hungry for, voracious, rapacious, unquenchable, insatiable, stuck on, gone on, need, want, set on, driven mad by, intoxicated, in your blood, besotted, befuddled, drunk, buzzed, bombed, high, stoned, hopped-up, coked-out, fucked, hooked, habit.

  Somewhere, sometime, somehow you lose something or see something lost.

  If you are lucky it was when you were young. If you are lucky you saw your parents divorced. If you are lucky your high school girlfriend died in a car crash. If you are lucky you saw your little sister lose the use of her legs because your family couldn’t afford the right health care.

  If you are unlucky, it will happen when you are older. If you are unlucky you will see your son lose his place at the college of his choice to the child of a man richer than you, rich enough to donate some new lab equipment. If you are unlucky your wife of thirty-seven years will develop bipolar disorder and have to be hospitalized after you come home from work and find she has opened her wrists with an electric meat carver. If you are unlucky you will lose your job after twenty-two years of service and will be too old to find another.

  If you are unlucky you will realize too late that the way you thought the world worked was just an illusion. If you are unlucky you will become afraid too late.

  But if you are lucky you will become afraid when you are young, afraid of the unexpected changing your life for the worse and not having enough power to set things back the way you wanted them to be.

  And then, if you are lucky, you will pursue power from that day forth. You will lead armies into Gaul, you will take on a colony in a new world, you will acquire money, you will only maintain relationships where you have the upper hand, only stay in jobs that can eventually lead to you being the one in charge. And you will do this because if you are lucky you will know that power means you don’t have to be afraid. Power means you can do what you want when you want to. Power means you can have what you want when you want it.

  If you are lucky, you will do this because you will know it is really Power that is worth any sacrifice, that it is really Power without which you can’t live, that it is really Power without which you can only eat and breathe and sleep and shit and sometimes not even that. You will do this because if you are lucky you will know that when we say we’d die for Liberty we’re really saying we’d die for Power.

  Except that in the pursuit of Power one of the things you will have to sacrifice will be the ability to enjoy the thing you lost or saw lost.

  So even if you reach that point where you aren’t afraid anymore, that point where you can relax, that point where you are free, that point you never reach, even if you reach that point, you will realize you weren’t so lucky after all.

  Yet, you wonder, who can say they’ve never been lucky?

  Have you ever seen a domesticated dog with his first bone? He will still try to bury it in his bed or the couch or under a skirting board even after all the pushing has worn the top of his nose raw.

  You are sitting outside your house in your imported British sports car. It is winter. The sky has just darkened and you have watched the lights come on inside. The trees and the bushes and the statues all around the house remind you of pictures you have seen of spacecraft during re-entry. Every surface, every edge, facing the house glows with yellow light. But beyond that, the objects disappear into darkness, become indistinct.

  You had driven up to Boston for a meeting. Normally you would have taken the company jet out of JFK but the car just arrived last weekend. It was the first one on American soil and you got it. So you decided to drive up. You were feeling confident, wanted everyone to see the new car. You were going to let them sit in it if they wanted to. And you knew they’d want to. Besides, Boston was only an hour farther from you than the airport, once you added in the flight time and the trip from Logan to the office, driving almost made things quicker. Almost. And it also might snow soon, then you’d have to wait until spring to take it out again. You refer to the car as “it.” You know some men, mostly older men, refer to cars as “her” and “she.” You think that’s foolish, that it’s silly to animate the inanimate.

  But then at the meeting, the meeting that was supposed to go well, out of nowhere people started using terms like “scramble” and “rapid repositioning.” At one point a COO who had originally been trained in the navy, said, “We got a real SNAFU here.” You asked him what the hell that meant anyway and he’d replied, “Situation Normal All Fucked Up.”

  You had been twenty-five minutes outside of Boston before you realized you’d forgotten to show everyone the car. They didn’t even know you’d driven up.

  And now you are looking at the front door, imagining what your wife will want to talk about when you go in. It’s not that she’s not understanding, she is. As understanding as she could be at least. You know some guys whose wives are a real pain in the ass, whose wives start piling shit on them the moment they walk in the door, whose wives the moment they walk in the door say something like, “You have to talk to that edging man, he won’t listen to me.” And then, when your friends say, “Can this wait until we’ve eaten?” when they say, “Can’t this wait until I’ve had a drink? I had a difficult day,” their wives say, “Well excuse me! You don’t think what I do is hard work? You don’t think raising your children and looking after your goddamn house is difficult!?” You know some guys who are so used to this, they don’t even bother to answer, they don’t even bother to say, “I’m not saying what you do isn’t hard work. I’m not saying what you do isn’t difficult. I’m not even saying I could do what you do. I’m just saying there wouldn’t even be a goddamn house or goddamn children or a goddamn edging man without my work!” You know some guys who don’t say any of that. They don’t say anything. They just sigh
and walk into the closest room with liquor and pour themselves a glass of twenty-five-year-old Highland malt. You even know some guys who would sometimes rather spend a night alone in a hotel in the city, who would sometimes rather go into work the next day in the same clothes than go home.

  But your wife isn’t like that. She’s not like that at all. Your wife is wonderful. She will say “poor dear” if you bother to tell her about today. You frequently don’t even have to tell her, frequently she knows how you feel just by looking at your face. She will give you sympathy, stroke your hair, rub soft little circles on that spot on the inside of your elbow. If there are problems with the kids or with the households, she will know enough to keep them to herself until the right time, will even try again to deal with them herself.

  And yet tonight when you go to bed, when you lie there awake all night long, your heart pounding like it’s going to leap out of your chest as you work and rework your strategy, when you lie there once more trying to figure out how to come out furthest ahead, when you lie there like that, by yourself, she will be sound asleep. And the kids will be sound asleep if they still live at home. And you are happy to give that to them. You really are.

  But at some point, perhaps around three or four A.M. after you’ve gotten up to make yourself a sandwich but have been unable to because you don’t know where anything is in your own kitchen, as you return to bed, as you get back in bed and pull the covers up over yourself, you will look down at her and you will wonder what she didn’t tell you. You will wonder what other problems you will have to deal with sometime soon, which parts of the things that were supposed to make you happy, which parts of the things that were supposed to fulfill you have gone wrong now. You will wonder what else you will have to deal with on top of the problem that hasn’t let you sleep.

  And it will occur to you, as you look down at your wonderful, caring, understanding wife, that if she is ever going to really talk at all, if at any point she is ever going to tell you about her life as she once did so long ago (but how long really — ten, fifteen years?), if she’s ever going to talk to you as she once talked to you about her classes or her love of sailing or her desire to join the Peace Corps, if she is ever going to talk to you like that again, she will have to talk to you about those responsibilities that she didn’t want to talk to you about when you came home tonight. Because they have become her life. Her whole life is now the responsibilities you have made for yourself outside your job. Her whole life is now the world that used to be your dream, the world you have been doing the work to create, the world that has become a burden, the world you now can’t bear to face.

  And so perhaps looking down at her, something that not so long ago used to fill your face with amazement, sheer disbelief that you were lying naked next to a woman like this, perhaps looking down at her you will suddenly feel sick. Perhaps looking down at her you will suddenly understand why sometimes when you come home and she opens the door with a smile on her face you can’t stand the sight of her, why sometimes when that door opens it feels like you’ve stepped off one unpleasant ride at an amusement park and right onto another one. And perhaps, just perhaps, just for a split second, you will think about how easy it would be to strangle her in her sleep. And then you will wonder where that thought came from.

  For no reason at all you run your fingers over the hand-carved wooden dash. You find yourself wondering why British sports cars are so small. Italian and German sports cars are a decent size, why do the British make everything so small, you wonder.

  You look at the house again. Then you start the car and go round the circle and out the driveway, hoping no one heard the crunching of the gravel as you went past the front door. You will go for a drink, just one quick drink before you go home.

  As you drive, you find yourself wondering if that is why some men never want to marry. Because they are smart enough to know that no matter how well you get along, no matter how well you understand each other, once you start sharing lives completely, wholeheartedly, you must arrive at this point eventually. You wonder if they never want to marry because they are smart enough to know you can only forget about your life in the company of people who are not part of your life.

  And as you drive you wonder if it would make a difference if she worked too, if she had a job as stressful as yours, if she too couldn’t sleep at night. If perhaps then there’d be some sense of camaraderie, some sense of the two of you battling together against the world. You wonder if things would be better somehow if she worked too. But you doubt it. If she worked too it seems like then, in addition to reminding you of all the responsibilities you have somehow accumulated outside your work, she would also remind you of all the responsibilities you have fought for inside your work. And it also seems like then, if she worked too, when she came home she’d want to talk to you as little as you wanted to talk to her.

  You drive past a fast-food restaurant, some place that serves tacos or burgers, some place with a “drive-thru.” You realize you haven’t eaten all day. You pull in behind a beat-up pickup. A five- or ten-year-old compact pulls in behind you. When you roll down the window to order, the sound of your engine completely drowns the sounds of theirs.

  And when you pull up to the drive-thru window, the attendant looks surprised but he doesn’t say anything until he hands you your change. Then he can no longer help himself and he says, “Man, if I had a car like that I wouldn’t be eating here!” And you smile, and nod, and take your change.

  You drive over to a deserted edge of the parking lot and look down at the food he gave you in its paper bag. It’s messy and for a second you consider eating it sitting outside on the curb but then you’d definitely ruin the seat of your pants and you don’t want to eat inside because you don’t want to leave the car alone in this particular parking lot so you tell yourself you’ll just be extra careful of the leather and begin eating in the car. But half-way through eating some kind of vegetable squirms loose, some kind of vegetable covered with some kind of sauce, and instinctively you snap your legs together to catch it and it lands in the crotch of your $1,000 pants. And, cursing, you pick it up between thumb and forefinger and open the door with your pinky and your elbow and get out of the car and put the food down on the ground and wipe yourself off with a napkin. It looks OK there and then but in the morning, in the sunlight, you will look at the pants and see that they are ruined. So now you stand there and eat, leaning slightly forward with each bite, and wonder why you didn’t think of eating this way before.

  And maybe as you eat you look over at a bar across the street, a bar you never really noticed before. It’s a little run-down but there are lots of cars around it, the kind of cars that were a good value when they were bought a few years ago, that would be a person’s first car or a family’s second, the kind of cars that, once they are a few years old, parents give their children when they go away to college. And maybe as you finish your food a new one pulls up and parks outside the bar. And maybe, just maybe, four or five young girls get out, there because this bar doesn’t card, there because they know as well as the local police know this bar makes most of its money off underage drinkers. You find yourself wondering how you can tell they’re young from this distance when you can’t even see the make of their car. They are overdressed for the kind of bar they are going to, wear cocktail dresses, have spent time on their hair. Even from across the street you can tell they spent time on their hair. Even from across the street you can tell they are looking to get laid.

  And maybe when you are done eating, you find yourself driving across the street to the bar. It’s as good as anywhere, right? You’re just going to have one drink and head home probably anyway. Why bother driving another five miles to the only bar within forty miles that serves the scotch you like? And if there’s a little something to look at while you drink, so much the better.

  You park around back, away from the other cars and out of sight of the street. You figure that’s less risky than leaving the car in the pa
rking lot where it might get hit or where someone could see it from the street and might try to steal it. Who’s going to know it’s even there around back?

  And maybe when you go inside, leaving your jacket and tie in the car, maybe the girls you think you saw getting out of the car are playing pool. And maybe for some reason, after you finish your first drink, after everyone in the bar has long since stopped staring at you, you find yourself putting your name on the board. And maybe you end up playing pool with those girls.

  After the break, after they overcome their initial shyness, after they are done speculating in whispers among themselves about what you’re doing in their bar, the boldest one of them, skeptical for some reason, asks you what you do. “So what do you do anyway?” she asks.

  And when you tell them, trying to put it as simply as possible, they all look a little confused except one girl who ventures, “Is that like a kind of merchant banking?”

  And when you tell her that merchant banking is very similar to what you do she nods and says, “Yeah, I saw a movie about that once.”

  And then they all start talking to you, asking you about what you do, where you went to college, where you live, whether you’ve been to certain places and what they’re like if you have. And for some reason you discover you are proud when you give the answers to these questions, answers that only an hour ago depressed you to even think about let alone say out loud. One of them knows your house, says, “Not that huge place you can only just see from the road?” They all start talking to you except the bold girl who first spoke to you. She sits and talks to three or four boys who sit nearby, boys she and her friends obviously already know a little bit. For a little while, the boys don’t even look at you, or if they do it’s just a disgusted glance. But then, when you start buying rounds of expensive drinks, drinks they could never afford, when you include them in those rounds, when you start actually enjoying your money for the first time in as long as you can remember, they suddenly want to talk to you, are suddenly standing near you instead of on the other side of the table like the girls, lean over your shoulder and give you advice on your shots, ask you questions about your business as if they already knew all about it, questions that always end in “right?” or begin with “But don’t you think . . . ”