The Virginity of Famous Men

by Christine Sneed

  “Yes, that’s the right word, but I’ll have to see,” I said.

  I could have told her yes and meant it, but she might have had eight friends who also wanted to be extras, and if I wanted my church, they would have to be hired too. Something along those crooked lines had happened before. Beautiful girls had raked their stiletto fingernails across my back and balls and my blind, dumbly thumping heart a few more times than I wanted to think about. I was forty-seven with two divorces and two kids in East Coast colleges and I knew that women like this ambitious girl could be as cruel and status-hungry as any multimillionaire studio head with his one P.M. foot massage, two P.M. blowjob, and sixty-thousand-dollar dinner parties.

  If I had said yes, she’d have known she had me, and likely as not, I’d keep saying yes. But then she gave me a look of such abject disappointment that after a few seconds of feeling my stomach twist into a tangle of knots, I said, Okay, fine. A second or two later I realized that she probably considered herself an actress and had been practicing certain looks for years in front of the mirror and her mother and siblings and the neighborhood gossips who stood around in her family’s crowded kitchen, chests out, feet splayed, eating sweets and drinking all the coffee. She had it down, but despite recognizing this, I didn’t want to let her out of my sight. It was painful to look at her too closely, everything about her so perfectly ordered, so soft and gleaming and implausible that she didn’t seem real.

  Strange as it might sound, I had the sudden disturbing feeling that things would soon start to go wrong for her, if they hadn’t already. I could see her marrying some brute who would beat her when drunk and impregnate her every year until she was round and mute as an eight ball, or she would end up crossing the border illegally and get picked up by another kind of brute who would rape her and leave her for dead somewhere along the parched, murderous road. I realized that I was prone to melodrama, but this was a pitfall of the trade that had paid my bills for almost twenty years.

  I got my church later that afternoon, and that night, after a new pair of sandals and a leather knapsack for Elsa, several drinks and a plate of chilaquiles y frijoles, I also got her into bed. I wasn’t sure how old she was but she looked at least twenty. She told me she was twenty-three. Twenty in Mexico wasn’t quite the same thing as twenty in America. If a girl was over twenty, came from a family with no money, and hadn’t yet been handed over to a passable husband, she might never find one she could stand to look at in the morning. The girls roaming the streets in most Mexican cities, the ones hoping for lonely, horny men with cash, were anywhere from eight to sixty-eight, but I didn’t usually look at them. It wasn’t that some of them weren’t worth looking at, but you didn’t know what would happen to you. Some had pimps who would take your watch, wallet, and shoes, then laugh and tell you to go to the police. There were far worse things too, obviously. And some of these girls worked in places partitioned like an emergency room, with only a piece of cloth to separate one groaning john from the next.

  Elsa wasn’t a prostitute but she wasn’t a virgin either. She didn’t even pretend to be. I did not want to be her first anyway. It was always better with a woman who knew what to expect when she was with a naked man.

  I took her back to my hotel a few more times over the next couple of days, and I remember her going into the bathroom at one point and rummaging through the things in my kit bag. My shaving brush was of great interest to her. She came out holding it and asked what I did with it. I pretended to smear some cream on her chin, the bristles tickling her. “American men are so funny,” she said. “Why don’t you use your hands to put it on?”

  “Because we’re a complicated breed.”

  “Breed? What is that?”

  “The kind of animal you are.”

  She gave me a funny look. “You’re not an animal.” She was wearing one of my white T-shirts and had her hair pulled back with a red headband. No one I’d touched had ever looked more beautiful than she did in that moment, and I felt this crazed unease, like I couldn’t let her out of my sight because the minute I did, someone would harm her.

  But I had to leave the next day, and when I did, she cried and told me that I’d been kinder to her than any other man she knew. I didn’t believe her, but her tears affected me. She gave me her number and asked me to call her from California.

  I said I would but didn’t end up keeping my promise. I had no idea what I’d have said to her over the phone: I miss you are you okay what’s new do you miss me? She was so young, probably no older than my twenty-one-year-old daughter, Lily. It would have been a pathetic joke. But I did miss her, thought of her a stupidly huge fraction of the time, and had sex with my girlfriend, Lisette, because I couldn’t have it with Elsa. I almost called her twice, but I’d look at her number on the hotel stationery and feel like a fool, my vanity overwhelming—who knew how many boyfriends she had, how many guys my age or younger she was playing around with. Someone as beautiful as she was had to have admirers, maybe some with more to offer than I did.

  Several weeks later, however, I saw her again. When I came back with the crew to shoot the church scene and a few others, I called her and kept my promise that she would be one of the hundreds of extras in The Color of Exile, a film that eventually ended up on some of the worst-films-of-the-year lists. No surprise, but I wasn’t paid to tell the director he would blow it.

  “I was waiting for you,” she said as soon as she heard my voice. “I knew you would call me. Come and get me right now. I want to stay with you tonight.”

  I didn’t ask what her mother thought. Her dad was long gone, off with another woman in another city. I didn’t want to get wrapped up in her family’s unhappiness anyway.

  She was wearing a pale pink dress when I picked her up, her beauty a blow to the knees. Her mother, a plump woman with her graying hair in a bun and a face as friendly as a slammed door, stayed inside their tiny beige house, which was on one of Tonalá’s narrow, steep streets. Elsa answered the door by herself, leaping at me and kissing me noisily on the lips. I wondered if anyone in the neighboring houses was watching us, people who might have been used to Elsa carrying on with strangers. “Should I come in and say hello to your mother?” I asked.

  “Okay. Venga.” She pulled me into the house, her smile so large it had to be sincere. In the little hallway that led in from the street, family pictures had been taped to the walls. Several pairs of worn-out flip-flops had been lined up beneath the photo gallery in a neat row. The house was dim and stuffy, and within seconds Elsa’s mother appeared before us, surprising me with her blue jeans and man’s black T-shirt, no apron or floral housedress. Elsa looked nothing like her. She shook my hand and said, “Mucho gusto, señor. Gracias.”

  I returned the greeting, not knowing what she was thanking me for. We nodded at each other but said nothing more.

  “It’s okay,” said Elsa. “She’s cooking. We can leave.”

  I could smell frying beef, chilies drifting with it. I was relieved that her mother didn’t invite me to stay for dinner, even if the food would have been good. We would have had nothing to say to each other. I didn’t know what my intentions with her daughter were, and she understood this, I’m certain, even better than I did.

  But it didn’t end after the two days she spent with me. I lived those two days in a state of hypersensitivity—everything brighter, louder, heavier, but also softer. There was Elsa in the center, all else background, a high-speed blur. I allowed myself to do something few sane people would have congratulated me for: I brought her with me to Pasadena, where I was living at the time. If I hadn’t, I wouldn’t have been able to stop thinking about her, missing her, worrying that she was letting herself be hurt by some violent idiot. When she said, “Tráigamelo. I want to go wherever you go,” I turned to her, my eyes stinging.

  We were lying on the bed, housekeeping banging on the doors down the hall, the carpet soggy from years of humidity and dirty feet, Elsa already dressed for the day in a yellow blou
se and short blue skirt, her toes brown and tiny against my hairy leg. I looked at her hard and saw how unmarked by time and disappointment she was, how unaware that the best possibilities of her life would probably become missed or failed chances. She was pre-reality in a sense, pre- most of the experiences that lead so many people to their final resting place of bitterness, cynicism, regret. Looking at her, I felt the staggering threat of my doubts and loneliness and lust. I didn’t know if I would get this close again to another girl like her. “All right,” I said. “You can come.”

  “But you have to do what I tell you,” I said. “When I tell you. No fucking around, because you could be sent back here so fast you’d get dizzy.”

  She cried out, loud enough for the maids down the hall to hear. “I’ve been waiting so long to leave here,” she said. “I will be good. Te lo juro, Jim.”

  I had money, enough for most of the things I wanted, and could take her across. A couple of the border guards knew me, and in those days, their price wasn’t very high, but I worried that they’d want her for themselves, that they’d despise and harass me for taking her out. Neither of them made any trouble though, let alone a hostile remark; they took my money and waved us through. Seconds after we crossed the border, she told me that she loved me. She turned to me with her starving eyes and soft mouth and flushed cheeks and whispered, Te quiero.

  I looked at her. “Te quiero too.” I don’t think it was a lie.

  Something else: it shouldn’t have, considering how many immigrants were dying every week trying to get across in the worst conditions conceivable, but it still astonished me that without taking much time to reflect on the implications, she was willing to pack a bag, say good-bye to her family and friends and everything that was familiar, everything that was safe, and go with me, a stranger whose past was unknown to her, to a future she could not have imagined, not with any authority, but she did. She did it without sentimentality too, as far as I could tell.

  We drove up from Guadalajara, a very long drive, desperation its chief geographical feature much of the way—ramshackle houses, fruit peddlers’ morose little stands, gas stations, and desiccated land. We didn’t fly because I didn’t know any of the immigration people at the airport on either end. We crossed near Tijuana and then drove up to San Diego, where we spent our first night together in America and I don’t think Elsa slept for one second. She had to touch everything and smell it too—not just the soap and lotion and shampoo in the bathroom, but the bed linens, the curtains, the paint on the walls, the armchair next to the TV, even the telephone. “It all smells so clean,” she said blissfully. “Me encantan los Estados Unidos.”

  “In English,” I said.

  “Sí, Mr. California,” she said, flashing me a gorgeous, maniacal smile.

  “You’ve really never been here before?”

  She shook her head. “Jamás.”

  “English, Elsa.”

  “If you marry me, I won’t have to worry about getting deported.”

  I didn’t say anything, only forced my mouth into a noncommittal smile. It wasn’t going to happen, but I didn’t tell her this. Two marriages were enough. I didn’t have any doubts that I’d be able to screw up a third one too, especially to someone who could easily have been mistaken for a friend of Lily’s or my son, Patrick’s, who was only a year and a half younger than his sister. My kids and I weren’t enemies, but over the past few years, it had started to bother me that we didn’t know one another very well, something that was mostly my fault. We hadn’t lived in the same house in almost twelve years; when they were still children, they visited me during summer vacations and one weekend a month, when I went to see them, or else flew them out to L.A., after I’d moved from Chicago, where they and their mother had remained. One of my first thoughts after I brought Elsa to California was that Patrick would be attracted to her too—any straight guy would have been. I could imagine us competing for her, the end result being that my son would win, but I didn’t see myself introducing them, at least not anytime soon. This should have been warning enough that bringing her north was a reckless, lunatic idea.

  At the time, however, I wasn’t interested in thinking about how or when it would end. You don’t buy a car that you’ve coveted for years and imagine yourself crashing it into a wall a few weeks later. I didn’t like endings, having lived through a number of bad ones already. Lisette was enough for me to worry about. I didn’t know what she would do when she found out that not only was I breaking things off, I had already found her replacement.

  “You’re a coward” was the first thing she said. “A stupid, selfish coward who’s so afraid of dying he has to fuck the life out of every girl he sees.”

  “That’s not true,” I said lamely.

  “I think it is,” she said. “Because you’re a liar too.”

  I didn’t let myself snatch at the bait. After two divorces, one of them acrimonious and prolonged, I knew it helped nothing to start accusing her of neglect or selfishness. She was still young, only thirty-four, a very pretty real estate agent with a well-trained singing voice she had given up trying to sell to record companies at twenty-five. “I thought we were going to make it,” she said angrily. “I really thought something was finally going to work out.”

  She said a few things more, forced me to take back the jade bracelet I’d given her a few weeks earlier, and told me to leave. I left her in Silver Lake and drove home, worrying the whole time that I’d made a mistake. Lisette was reliable, mature, an American citizen, a known quantity, as much as any woman could have been.

  Elsa was very jealous that I even had to see Lisette—couldn’t I have broken up with her over the phone?

  No, I couldn’t have. Lisette deserved better treatment, even if I wasn’t capable of offering it with any consistency.

  “How many other girls are you with?” Elsa asked. “I’m not the only one, no?”

  “You are the only one,” I said. “Now that I’ve talked to Lisette.”

  “Swear it,” she said in a high, urgent voice. We were in the downstairs hallway, posters from a few of the better movies I’d worked on lining the walls. Her hair was damp; she’d just gotten out of the pool. I tried to touch her, but she backed away. “Cut your finger and swear on the blood,” she said.

  I stared at her. “I’m not going to cut myself, Elsa. You’re going to have to take my word for it. For everything, not just Lisette.”

  “I don’t believe you. No soy la única.”

  “You are the only one. I’m not lying to you.”

  She retreated to the kitchen and I went upstairs to lie down, my head throbbing, but a minute or two later she appeared in the bedroom. She had a steak knife in her fist, the blade pointing at the ceiling, the exact opposite of how my ex-wife and I had taught our children to carry scissors and knives. “Cut,” she ordered, thrusting the knife toward me.

  I got up and grabbed the knife from her, sweating now. “I’m not going to cut myself,” I said. “You’re the only person I’m with. You have to trust me. I don’t want anyone else.”

  We stared at each other, her delicate face rigid with anxiety. Mine couldn’t have been much better. The knife made it clear that she could do whatever she wanted to me when I wasn’t looking, a fact that somehow hadn’t occurred to me until then. She might actually have been crazy. She had only been with me in Pasadena for four days by that time, not long enough for me to know, not by any stretch. A few of the people I’d worked with over the years should have been institutionalized but they had enough other people managing their lives to keep them out of the asylum most of the time. There were few limits to what a person with enough money and fame could do.

  “What if Lisette wants to see you?”

  “She won’t.”

  “What if she does?”

  “She won’t. It’s over.” I didn’t know this for sure, but I wasn’t going to admit it. I was already mourning Lisette and hoped that I wouldn’t feel this way for long. I did not lik
e being the villain. My behavior had created unhappiness, disturbances in the field, more often than I cared to admit. I realized that others I knew had done much worse, but this wasn’t particularly reassuring.

  Elsa was different in America, less confident, more childlike, and I tried to comfort her by spoiling her. If she asked for something material, I said yes. My wallet flew open and the money disappeared into clanging cash registers all over town. Old fool, I could hear a voice in my head sneer. Lily in particular gave me a hard time after she found out about Elsa. “What about Lisette?” she said. “I liked Lisette. You’re a jerk, Dad. Don’t complain to me when things get weird. How do you know you can even trust this person?”

  “She’s a sweetheart, Lily. When you meet her, you’ll see. She’s not taking advantage of me.”

  She made a harsh sound. “I’ve heard that one before. Note to Dad, I don’t want to meet her, so don’t bother sending me a plane ticket.”

  Patrick had nothing to say about Lisette or Elsa when he found out. “Whatever” was his stock response. Dad has a new girlfriend, so what. I thought that if he met Elsa, his attitude would change. Something that is more obvious in L.A. than in most other places is that men hate each other. Aging men especially hate younger men because the most coveted girls like the younger guys more, even if they have less money. The gorgeous girl with the old man? It’s his money, the security he offers, not some asinine Freudian thing.

  Elsa was so beautiful that worry over losing her crouched in my gut like a venomous toad. She was dependent on me for everything, but it didn’t matter. I constantly imagined another man snatching her away, knocking on the front door while I was off hustling for my next big paycheck, Elsa left on her own, sleeping in and watching television, sunbathing, reading magazines, passing the time until my return, when we’d go out to dinner or down into L.A. to sightsee. I took her to Chinatown, the Griffith Observatory, and the Walk of Fame, to shop on Melrose and in the Grove, and I’d notice people looking at her. In a city where no one wanted to be caught looking at anyone else, especially if they weren’t famous, people were looking at her. They were probably wondering if she was someone they should know. I felt both proud and viciously possessive. I was glad I had found her but a pit had opened in my stomach and I stood on its edge, trying not to look down. I knew at least three or four other guys who would have tried to take her from me without a second thought.