Fall and Rise

by Stephen Dixon

  “What besides what I think you’re thinking we used to be able to do well, which, all right, we did, but so what?”

  “Oh that? We could still do it well—believe me—no sweat.”

  “Let’s change the subject?”

  “Or with lots of sweat. But let’s change it. Getting too grownup for me. Wait, that’s not the remark I wanted to make.”

  “We used to cook compatibly together.”

  “You’re referring to what else we used to do well together besides bullshit and serious talk and that other subject before we changed it?”

  “Yup, cook. We complemented each other in the kitchen.”

  “We did, and we were also great summer tourists in Europe together, with lots of European sweat. Real sweat, from the sun and lots of jaunting, not that changed subject. And when I had a motorcycle you were a great passenger behind me and then rider when I taught you how to ride it and I was the passenger, so we rode well together in various ways too. And what else well? Well, not do but attend and-or enjoy: opera, dance, occasionally the same book. And we once painted your living room together.”

  “Not compatibly.”

  “I bellyached, true. So we didn’t do that so well together, nor your foyer. Like to stop for a bite together? Empire Cafe on your right.”

  “No, just want to go home and go to bed.”

  “Mind if I ask how your work’s going, just to keep us compatibly on the road together?”

  “Enough already with together. And fine. Curating fine?” We’ve stopped for a light. He didn’t answer. I look over at him. He’s looking pretty seriously at me. “Yipes, what’s coming next?”

  “What do you expect? You’re so fucking great looking.”

  “Now now.”

  “Now now nothing. Fucking exciting great. I have got to kiss you. This is a long light. I know it from other nights. This one and another on Riverside and Eighty-third. I have got to, Helene.”

  “Not to distract you, but did you put aftershave on in the men’s room?”

  “Okay, why?”

  “Just curious. You carry it in or was some left there?”

  “On the sink shelf. The manufacturer of it put a few atomizers there as a test of a new scent, a note said on the mirror. I was supposed to take a prestamped card and send it in as to what I thought of it. You like it? I don’t mind it but I won’t ask for it at the store, which is what their real intention was.”

  “It’s all right. Not alluring, not repelling. But I don’t especially like fake scents on men as you might have remembered, nor any strong work scent either, though I can appreciate the latter more.”

  “I don’t remember. I should have, shouldn’t I? What I actually thought was that you liked men’s cologne. I couldn’t have been thinking of anyone else. But what about it?” and he makes little kissing noises. “I want to, mucho.”

  “Then don’t make a big thing of it or hit me with the dirties or chipmunk sound effects. But do it before the light changes.”

  “You’re not doing this just to keep the journey safe?”

  “Oh sure, some safe journey. But I’m not. I’d like to kiss you.” A car honks behind us. Light’s changed. “Too late. I knew you were stalling. Next red light and no blab about how you have got to and my exciting nothingness. Just lean over. I’ll be here, maybe a few inches closer, and ready.”

  “We should also go to bed.”

  “Now stop. One thing at a time and now’s not that time.”

  “If it leads to it?”

  “What’s got into you? You were never so unwilling to just kiss nor exacting for future promises from it. So let’s at the next red and if it leads to that other thing, it does. I could do it. I’m pretty ready for that too. Truthfully, it wouldn’t be because I was in any but maybe an old memory way touched with unfulfilled feelings for you. You’re still attractive to me. And I know what we could usually do once we got around to it even in some of our worst moments, and that you wouldn’t make a big deal of it. And you wouldn’t, would you? That is, if we did ultimately do it—because that wouldn’t be like you. It’s not smart to sleep with ex-boyfriends if they’re going to put you through things after you’ve slept with them again for one night.”

  “We were almost engaged.”

  “The light coming up is about to turn red. Are you still game for just starters?”

  “There won’t be a problem.” We’re driving along the alternative road for the highway. River’s on our left and not too far ahead an enormous liner is docked, with all its lights on it seems and one of its smokestacks going. We’re a few blocks from the elevated part of the highway if that part hasn’t been torn down too. Didn’t a moving truck sink through what became its razed part somewhere around here which started this whole multibillion dollar removal? Light’s red. We’ve stopped, he moves closer to me, I stay still, we kiss. Feels good. “Nice, huh?” he says. “You always had the softest lips existent, except when you got a sore or two on them. Mind?”

  “Another kiss? No.”

  He kisses me harder, tries to pry my lips open with his tongue and I fight him. Oh let him, so I let him. We go at it like that, his hand on my thigh, mine on his, both stroking, lips not parting, my skin jingling and head back to boozy. Honks, like a boop-boop-be-doop, behind us. He releases me and the handbrake and we drive on. “Come to my place,” he says when we’re passing the liner and going up the highway ramp too fast for me to catch its name. I always wanted to see the QE2 up close, and maybe I just did, but only with a bit of rummaging through today’s or tomorrow’s newspaper about ship arrivals and departures will I know. “You don’t have to stay the night, but stay if you want to. In fact if you do come you should stay. But come—that’s the important thing. Helene?”

  “I’m here; I was just thinking. Was that the QE2 we passed?”

  “I didn’t see it.”

  “It was several blocks long and had three smokestacks and a dark hull.”

  “I once sailed on the Queen and in the six or seven days it took to Bremer-haven—seven, since Le Havre was six—I don’t ever remember observing how many stacks it had. But sounds right. Most liners have two. Huge ships like the Queen, probably three.”

  “I’d love to sail on it, but only to Europe. I’ve never gone by ship.”

  “We could this summer. Fly one way, return by ship, or the reverse. The Queen still does.”

  “Please, we will not. And your place? Also not a good idea. I don’t care what I said about old boyfriends or even near-fiancés, it’s different with ones I loved, and I loved you, you jerk.”

  “And this jerk loved you. So it stopped for us both. But we could still fuck tonight, because look at that kiss.”

  “You have to say it that way? I’ve nothing against curse words, but that’s all acting on your part. Turning-me-on talk that’s turning me off.”

  “Pigshit. Scumbags. Fistfuckers. Cocksucking. It’s a great idea, not a good one, and you have a great body, not a good one, and I want to fuck it. I want to fuck you. I want to screw you and lay you and perform the act of love with you and grab your ass with me on top of your ass and big tits with me on the bottom and I want to suck, fuck and pluck and really plow you. I want to very badly. So, that’s so bad? Fuck it and too fucking bad, for that’s what the fuck I feel and want to do.”

  “Thank goodness there are no red lights on this.”

  He pulls over to the right, puts the hazard lights on and starts coming to a stop.

  “Don’t! That’s insane! You’ll kill us!”

  “Sorry,” and he pulls into the driving lane. “And I’m a dummy and also sorry for my talk if it repulsed you.”

  “It didn’t repulse. It—”

  “Whatever, I’m sorry, and you know what I still want to do. We’d do it for the pure kicks of it and because we once loved and now very much like and respect one another, at least you can be assured I still do with you and even if that respect part sounds contradictory after my fuck talk
. Or for no other reason but—no, no reason at all or not one we—”

  “Oh—”

  “Please, Helene.”

  “Oh, I’ll come up. I can’t seem to—oh, I can but I don’t want to argue, because why not?—sure. But only if you promise to give me a good back massage and a glass of seltzer.”

  “I’ll massage you anywhere and all night if you want and I only have club soda.”

  “I thought I could always get seltzer at your place.”

  “Maybe I have some. I probably do, put away for special occasions.”

  “And just my back. Don’t get so enterprising. I doubt my body could take more than that tonight. Now I’m going to doze off but not so deeply where you can’t wake me when we arrive.”

  “You want to have a baby badly, don’t you.”

  “Whuh?” My eyes had been shut five seconds.

  “Not by me, but you really still do. Just answer me, then doze.”

  “Why that out of nowhere?”

  “Like that. Had a feeling, had to say it. If I didn’t I would have lost it. Infantile attitude á la friend Sven, but you want to get married to someone very unlike me—someone who wants to get married but really and have a baby soon. That’s why you were so, well, sad at the balcony announcement, and later pissed off at Sven, besides what that Arthur fellow would make anyone feel.”

  “My, you have quite the head on your hat, old buddy. You sure do.”

  “Don’t have to get cynical.”

  “Then why try to get me to say what you already know and what is probably still a sore point between us? That’s even worse turn-off behavior and talk than that turn-off talk from before. Maybe you had a change of mind about my coming up.”

  “Most certainly not. I thought I was getting into something deep; I obviously wasn’t.”

  “If you were saying has my attitude changed on the matter in the last year—”

  “Maybe that’s what I was saying.”

  “It wasn’t, but I’ll answer anyway, bluntly, not deep. It hasn’t. I still do ultimately want to have a baby with someone I care for very much, and I feel confident I will. And because of my age I should be thinking seriously about having one fairly soon, not so much because of the increasing risks of conceiving an unhealthy baby but because I want to be frisky enough to take care of it and play with it and continue to know it over a long period of time. But it’s not a serious problem with me. I’m not, in other words, if Mr. Love doesn’t come along, going to have one as a Miss Mom or jump into marriage with a loving schmuck who also wants to have a baby, just to have one. And it’s not going to stop me, your talk—at least what you’ve said so far, so this is a sincere petition not to say anymore about it—from making love tonight, if you still want to and we’re not too tired to, since right now that’s what I’d like to do. If I’ve broken your balls a little just now, I apologize, since that’s not what I wanted to do at all. Now give me my three-minute doze.”

  “Granted.”

  He taps my shoulder. “We’re here. Got a spot in front. Everything’s working for us. Not a mugger in sight. Even the moon can be seen and a number of meteorites knocking about in the wrong half of the hemisphere for the night. You’re not too sleepy?”

  “Why, do you want me to be?”

  “You harp back on that so much I think it’s you who wants me to be immediately asleep.”

  “I don’t, so let’s get it over with. No, that isn’t nice or what I mean, so let’s put it this way: we’re kind of using one another tonight, but that also has to be the way it is sometimes if nothing better is around. No, that’s not nice or right either. How can I say what I have in mind to without irritating you and gumming up the goal?”

  “I never heard you talk like that before.”

  “You have so. Selective forgetting. Let’s go up.”

  The doorman has to unlock the door to let us in. “Hey there, Helene.”

  “Russell? Hi—It’s been so long I didn’t recognize you. You lost weight but it looks good.”

  “Couldn’t feel better. Have a good night? Good.” He holds the elevator door open till we get in, presses the button for Peter’s floor. “Goodnight.”

  “You don’t know how lucky you are having such wonderful doormen.”

  “He had a bypass in his thigh this year that nearly finished him. Did I set the Chapman lock in the car?”

  “You pushed something in under the dashboard.”

  “That’s it. He even took last rites.”

  “Then what’s he doing working this shift?”

  “He sleeps, rests. We might be the last tenants in. If you had no wife, kids, education or skills, you’d be fighting for his job.”

  He holds my hand and whistles something from a familiar aria as he watches the floor indicator flash the floors, kisses me when the door opens. I don’t know why I’m doing this. I’m not excited anymore. He’s not attractive to me anymore. His breath stinks from alcohol and some egg dish when it didn’t before. Mine probably does too but from another food. He’s handsome and slim and a good lover and I’m almost sure I’ll be able to lose myself making love with him, but everything I said before except my wanting to have a baby with someone I care for and who’s a permanent live-in was all wrong. False and fairly high and fagged-out champagne talk, if I wasn’t feeling so sharp and sober, so don’t fall for those excuses. But I do want to make love and after it’s over he’s a quiet guy to sleep with and he’ll let me leave with no big scenes at the door, no fake promises for more, just both of us appreciative of having some of our immediate needs met, and maybe after some late-morning lovemaking if I want and even if he doesn’t, because that’s what he was also good for. For not once would he admit he couldn’t or didn’t want to get an erection, and what a struggle sometimes when I’d have to say “It’s okay, we’ll try in the morning or another day or some other time tonight—I’ll wake you if I get the urge,” and he’d say “No trouble, lady,” and play with himself or me or whatever he’d do till he got one that stayed. But go through with it, since it’s been a few months and lately I’ve been feeling something very important and explicable has been missing from my life which no amount of masturbating or work can make up for.

  First thing in he turns on the lights and record player. “Your eighteenth-century German flute, plus or minus a century and nationality, which I was listening to before I left—I wasn’t expecting you here. Sure no wine or beer?” No, so he goes. I look at the primitive sculptures and masks he’s acquired or has on loan since I was last here. All to some extent phallic or oral-anal-vaginal phallic-receptive. Though a few do have procreative or foreplay subjects and one’s of a bearded naked woman standing on a stool—what’s that mean?—and another is of a clothed young man strumming what looks like a lute, plus a five-foot high mask of an insane shaman with his mouth closed but two tongues coming out of his nose. I bet he’s had thirty different women here since my last visit. He used to keep a spermicide in his medicine chest for sudden conquests. Condoms too if he had to, which he ordered through a coupon in Playboy: specially ribbed. He comes back, says “Sit over here,” I sit on the couch, be sits beside me, I drink the club soda, he some wine, he kisses my neck. Good, it’s begun. “Why don’t we take off our clothes and go to bed,” I say.

  “Sure, we should, but here. It’d be too unshipshape, undies all over the bed and floor.” He takes off his tie and starts unbuttoning his shirt. “Actually, want me to take off your clothes?”

  “That’d be nice. No, let’s take off our own clothes, wash up and go to bed.” I stand.

  “I’ve washed. Did you come with anything?”

  “I’m like you, or as I remember you. I always keep one in my medicine chest,” holding up my bag.

  “Interesting. You must be getting laid a lot these days. What do you know—said the wrong thing again.”

  “Truth is, I’m not, and I don’t have anything with me—that was just a tease. I thought you, much as I hate the smell
of those things, could use an ordinary condom at the last moment.”

  “At the last moment I can’t.”

  “Doesn’t matter. I’ve been feeling my period coming on for two days.”

  “Is it absolutely safe-positive-sure?”

  “Always has been. I already got a few blood drops in my underpants. One go at sex and it should begin to flow.”

  “Should I put a rubber mat under the sheet?”

  “I’ll give you plenty of warning.”

  “You have a tampon with you?”

  “That I’m prepared for,” shaking the bag.

  The phone rings. “Who the hell could that be so late? Maybe I shouldn’t answer it.”

  “Don’t look at me.”

  “I have to answer it. It could be bad family news and sometimes has been this late. I’ll tell you after about my sister. Excuse me.”

  He runs to the bedroom, shuts the door. I go into the bathroom, undress, open his medicine chest to look for a box of Q-Tips to clean my ears. It’s an awful habit, never buying a box for myself but only using Q-Tips I find in other people’s bathrooms. But it’s only two to four Q-Tips a person and I try not to hit the same medicine chest twice. It’s just something I do—some intentionally aberrational part of me I don’t question or want to change and perhaps my last link to a mediumly renegade life. I’ll probably do it even after I’m married, unless my husband already buys Q-Tips for himself, but not after I have a baby, since I suppose it’s necessary for a number of reasons to have them around for a child. And so far every time I’ve wanted to clean out my ears, which is about every second week, I’ve found a box of them or one of its inferior equivalents in other people’s bathrooms.

  I take two Q-Tips out of the box and start to clean. Door’s locked, so he can’t walk in. Lots of wax, some of it quite hard and dark, so it could be three to four weeks since I did this. Most times two are enough. Now, after five—maybe a record number for me—the cotton nib comes out clean from both ears without digging too far in, and I flush the used Q-Tips down.