It was the last time I was going to see him before he left for California. He had a few more days before he left, but he had to move out of his apartment and put his stuff in storage. He said he was going to try to find a cheap room when he got back to New York. He seemed stressed out.
“How much stuff do you have?” I said.
“About two large bags,” he said.
“I know this sounds crazy, but you could stay here when you get back,” I said. “You could leave your bags here.”
“That’s very kind of you, but I have only known you for four days.”
“I know,” I said. “Okay.”
“But we will see each other when I return.”
“Okay,” I said.
He kissed me. I put my hand on his arm, but he pulled his arm away.
“What’s wrong?”
“You touched Pearl and then you touched me.”
“Uh,” I said. “She’s not really that dirty.”
“I don’t know,” he said.
I washed my hands and he kissed me again.
“Okay,” he said. “Good-bye. Good-bye, Pearl.” He waved at her. She wagged her tail.
• • •
I waited to hear from the Swiss guy. I wondered if I even was going to hear from him, and if it was possible to fall in love in four days and two weeks. I wondered if wanting to talk to him plus wanting to listen to him plus being satisfied with his man parts equaled love.
I couldn’t text the Swiss guy myself, because that was against the rules as laid out by my younger brother. A couple of years earlier he had explained that a girl should never initiate contact with a guy. If a guy contacts you first you can write back, but you should never make the first move. My brother said it was basic human psychology—the less you contact a guy, the more he wonders about you, and the more he wonders about you, the more he thinks he likes you. I had been following my brother’s instructions and they seemed to be working fine. I liked avoiding guys not writing me back by not writing them in the first place.
School started and the Swiss guy finally wrote to say he had met another nice dog on his travels. He sent me a picture of it. He asked if I wanted to hang out that week when he was back. Then he said he was getting in the next morning and didn’t have anywhere to go. I did the math and figured that he was already at the airport in California. I said I agreed that he shouldn’t stay with me, but if he wanted he could come over in the morning and stay for a night or two while he looked for a room. He said we could talk about it when he got there, and I felt embarrassed for offering again.
I went to bed late, and I could hardly sleep with the promise of sex running through my body. Finally the Swiss guy called to say he was downstairs, and Pearl and I went down to meet him. Pearl recognized him through the front door and went bananas.
Back upstairs the Swiss guy and I had sex, he went to sleep on the couch, we woke up and had sex again, he left to go do research at the library, and when he came back we had sex again.
On Monday he was scared to be home alone with Pearl so he went to a coffee shop when I went to school. That evening I met up with him and we went to a Mexican restaurant in my neighborhood. The Swiss guy balked at the health department rating of B, but I told him that all the restaurants in the neighborhood had Bs, and that the only difference between a B restaurant and an A restaurant was that the A restaurant got lucky during their inspection. He told me all about his trip to California and then he started talking about how he was leaving forever. I said I really wished he had told me before we met, or at least when we met. He said he was sorry and told me about a successful fling he had when he was traveling in Asia. The girl was German and he said they traveled around together and had a nice time. Now she was married and had a baby.
“So you do this a lot?” I said.
“No, not a lot,” he said. “That was the first time and this is the second time.”
“Great.”
I waited for him to explain how this was different from the first time, but he moved on to telling me what research he still needed to do before he left. He was eating and drinking very slowly, and eventually we were the last people in the restaurant.
When we got home I told him I needed a minute and went into my bedroom and cried. Pearl lay with me. When I thought I could control myself I went into the bathroom and washed my face. The Swiss guy was sitting in the living room, waiting for me to help him use my illegal portable washing machine, and now Pearl was sitting next to him on the couch.
“Have you been sleeping?” he said.
“No. Where’s the laundry you want to do?”
“Are you feeling sad?” he said.
“No,” I said, and went back to the bathroom to cry a little more.
When I came out he wanted to talk about it.
“There’s nothing to talk about,” I said. “I think I’m going crazy right now.”
“You’re not crazy,” he said.
I got into bed and he followed me. Pearl curled up between us.
“Why are you feeling sad?” he said.
“Because I’m crazy and because I never meet anyone I don’t hate. And I don’t hate you but you’re leaving.”
“It’s sad for me too,” he said. “I don’t want to leave. But it’s very difficult to stay in America without a job.”
“I know. It’s okay. We don’t have to talk about it.”
“We can if you like to.”
“I don’t want to.”
We did his laundry and then got back in bed and had sex. After, I asked him if he wanted to sleep in the bed and solemnly swore that Pearl wouldn’t kill him, but he said he wasn’t ready.
I felt better the next day. We agreed to meet outside the library after school and get groceries and make dinner at home. He hadn’t said anything about finding a room.
When I got to the library there was a crowd standing over someone on the ground. I called the Swiss guy to find him. He was standing up the block. He said the guy was on the ground because a lot of kids kicked him and then ran away. He said he didn’t do anything because at first he thought the kids were playing and then when he realized they weren’t, he didn’t want them to attack him too.
While we were standing there a fire truck and an ambulance pulled up to the curb.
“Here’s the fire truck,” I said.
“Why is there a fire truck?”
“For that guy.”
“But why does he need a fire truck?”
“He doesn’t, but they always send one.”
“Should I go and tell them what I have seen?”
“I doubt it would help.”
“It was a big group of teenagers and they went that way.” He pointed up the street.
“It’s too late now,” I said. “I’m sure they’re long gone.” I couldn’t believe the Swiss guy watched the whole thing and did nothing. Even if he was too scared to intervene, he could have at least called the police.
We started walking.
“Is it very dangerous in this neighborhood?” he said.
“No. I’ve never seen anything like that happen before. And those kids probably knew each other.”
We stopped to get groceries and I paid for them. When we got home Pearl was very excited to see us, especially the Swiss guy. She danced around him. He asked me what I thought she did while we were gone. I said I didn’t know. I took her out and then I made a stir-fry with the vegetables we bought and a pepper I already had.
“Is that pepper still good?” said the Swiss guy.
“Yeah,” I said. “I bought it a few days ago.”
He talked and talked about applying for fellowships and jobs. He said it was hard for people to get a job in their field in Switzerland, especially if their field was academic. We ate in the kitchen and I sat on a high stool and he sat on a chair. Looking down at him I noticed that his hair was thinning and the scalp underneath was shiny.
After dinner we had sex. I now understood that he
had two signature moves, neither of which I particularly liked. One was patting my vagina, which he must have learned from a porno. The other was swiveling his hips in what felt like a circle. To get him to stop the patting I initiated sex, and to get him to stop the circles I offered to get on top.
Afterward he wanted to talk about Pearl. She was curled up at the bottom of the bed and her eyelids were twitching.
“Is she dreaming?” he said.
“I guess so.”
“What is she dreaming about?”
“I don’t know.”
“Maybe she is dreaming about squirrels.”
“Maybe.”
When he was done watching Pearl, he went to go sleep on the couch.
• • •
On Friday night the Swiss guy met a friend for dinner and I was glad for the silence. I was starting to wonder when he was going to leave, but I still wanted to have sex. Before he got home I put on a lacy chemise.
“That’s a nice pajama,” he said when he got there. “Shall I come visit you in your room for a while?”
We lay down and started making out. Then he licked the roof of my mouth. I jerked my head back but he tried to put his tongue back in to do it again. I started to touch him but he started patting my vagina.
“That doesn’t feel good.”
He kept doing it. He was supporting my theory that most guys touch vaginas to turn themselves on, and are not really concerned with what feels good to the vagina. I thought the Swiss guy would be different. I moved his hand.
“That doesn’t feel good,” I said.
“Okay,” he said. “What can I do then?”
“Mouths feel good,” I said.
“What?” he said.
“You could use your mouth.”
“What?”
“Oral sex?” I said. “Not happening?”
“Well we haven’t been tested.”
“I’ve been tested.”
“But you haven’t been tested for everything.”
“There’s no way to test for everything.”
“I would like to wait until we can be tested for everything. I am worried about getting throat cancer like Michael Douglas.”
Another time I would have laughed, but I was not in the mood.
“Okay,” I said. “Never mind.”
I put lube on myself and then tried to put it on him, but he jumped away.
“Do you mind going to wash your hands?” he said.
“I haven’t touched Pearl at all,” I said.
“But you touched yourself and now you want to touch me.”
“Okay.” I got up and washed my hands. I was all for safe sex, and I definitely wasn’t going to blow the Swiss guy when he hadn’t been tested, but I had been tested and him freaking out anyway was starting to make me feel like my vagina was crawling with carcinogens.
When I got back with my hands clean we started having sex. Then he asked me if I wanted to do it from behind, and I said okay because I always want to do it from behind. I know it’s supposed to be degrading but it’s a good angle. But this time the Swiss guy started doing something different. It was like he was both behind me and on top of me, and something was putting pressure on my back.
“You’re hurting my back,” I said.
“What is hurting?” he said, out of breath.
“You’re hurting my back,” I said.
“Okay,” he said, and stopped whatever he was doing.
A little while later he started trying to do it again.
“You’re going to break my back,” I said. I moved forward to get out from under him. I turned over and let him in again from the front.
“I’m not going to come,” I said. “You can go ahead.”
“Are you certain?” he said.
“Yes, I’m certain.”
He did his circle thing until he came.
He went to the bathroom and when he came back he said, “I think I can sleep in the bed with you and Pearl tonight.”
He sat on the edge of the bed and put his pajamas on, long pants and a turtleneck. He got under the covers and we slept on opposite sides of Pearl, him in his pajamas and me naked.
• • •
The next morning he woke me up.
“It’s Saturday,” I said. “Please don’t wake me up.”
He left me alone for a little while and then came back and started talking to me again.
“Do you need something?” I said.
“No,” he said.
“Okay,” I said. “Then please don’t wake me up.” But it was too late; I was awake. I kept my eyes closed until I heard him leave the apartment, and then I got up.
That night I told him I had a lot of work to do and shut myself and Pearl in my room. Pearl cried on my side of the door. I told her the Swiss guy wasn’t all he was cracked up to be. I told her he was prejudiced against pit bulls. When it was time for bed the Swiss guy said that he hadn’t been sleeping well on the couch, and could he sleep in the bed again. I didn’t want it to seem like I was punishing him for licking the roof of my mouth, so I said fine. But the next night I locked the door to my bedroom before he got home.
The less I talked to him, the more the Swiss guy talked to me. He mostly wanted to talk about Pearl. If she was awake he wanted to know if she was sleepy. If she was sleeping he wanted to know if she was really sleeping or if it just looked like she was. He wanted to know if she was hungry, and I pointed out that she had a huge bowl of food on the floor, and if she wanted to she could eat the whole damn thing. Instead she liked to eat a couple of kibbles every hour or so. The Swiss guy wanted to know why. One day he asked me if Pearl was going to work with me. I said no, she definitely couldn’t go to school, and he wanted to know why not.
In addition to talking about himself and talking about Pearl, he liked to talk about my kitchen. He didn’t like that I let the dishes pile up, and tried to convince me that it was better to wash them right away. He was also very concerned with whether my food was still good. I made macaroni and cheese and he wanted to know if the cheese he grated for me was still good, even though it had come straight from the wrapper. He wanted to know if the eggs I used were still good, and if the oil I made the potatoes in was still good. He did buy groceries once: more milk for his coffee, a tin of cookies, and a bottle of wine product. The wine product was made of California table wine, water, sugar, concentrated juice, natural fruit flavors, citric acid, and carbon dioxide.
I pretty much stopped talking to the Swiss guy, but Pearl didn’t. They spent a lot of time sitting on the couch together. He let her sit on his lap and he talked to her in a baby voice, asking her questions about herself. Once I caught him letting her lick his ear. He was laughing, and all of a sudden she licked his open mouth. I could only hope that Pearl had HPV all over her tongue.
I started going to bed at seven or eight, before the Swiss guy came home, and leaving before he got up in the morning. I didn’t see him at all for several days. I told my brother that I was running a homeless shelter out of my apartment, and he offered to come down to the city to invite the Swiss guy to leave. My brother was an amateur MMA fighter and worked as a bouncer, and he was good at inviting people to do things he wanted them to do. I should have taken him up on it, because I didn’t have the guts to do it myself. It was only a few more days until the Swiss guy was flying back, and letting him stay seemed better than having to talk to him to ask him to leave. He did end up offering to leave, several days after I stopped speaking to him and two days before he was going to leave anyway. I told him not to bother.
Then the Swiss guy mentioned that there was a chance he would be able to make a last-minute presentation at a conference in New York in two weeks. He wondered if he should change his ticket. I wondered what would happen if he tried to stay. I googled “how to evict a guest.” I didn’t mean evict literally, but it turned out that in some cases you did actually have to evict guests. If they stayed for thirty days, they would establish residency a
nd you would have to legally evict them. And even before thirty days, if you asked someone to leave and they didn’t, and you changed the locks and put their bags outside, they could say that you had a verbal agreement and sue you for unlawful eviction.
I called my brother back and told him that I really didn’t need him to come down, but I was just wondering what he would do if I did.
He said he would ask the Swiss guy to leave.
“But what if he didn’t leave?”
“I wouldn’t give him the choice.”
“What do you mean?”
“I would tell him that it was time for him to leave, and if he didn’t leave on his own I would help him.”
“What do you mean you would help him?”
“I would give him whatever incentive he needed to leave, and if he still didn’t leave I would make it very uncomfortable for him to stay. And if he gave me a reason to remove him physically, I would do that.”
“Okay.”
“Do you need me to come down?”
“No, not yet.”
• • •
The Swiss guy wanted to take me out to eat to thank me for my hospitality. By that point I felt that the only way he could thank me was to fall off the face of the earth. He countered any excuse I gave with a different time or a different place. Finally, to get him to stop asking, I said maybe to breakfast on Saturday, the day before he was supposed to leave. He hadn’t said anything else about changing his ticket, but he hadn’t said anything about keeping it either. On Friday night when he wanted to confirm our breakfast plans, I told him that it was still maybe. I told him I didn’t know what time I would be up, and that he shouldn’t wake me unless the apartment was on fire.
On Saturday morning I woke up having to pee and looked at my watch. It was only eight twenty, and I was half proud of myself for getting up so early, and half crushed that I would have to face the Swiss guy so early. I lay in bed trying to control my bladder, and wondering if I could get to the bathroom and back without him knowing I was awake. Finally I couldn’t wait any longer. I left Pearl in the bedroom. I peed and then peeked into the living room. The Swiss guy wasn’t there.
I went back to my bedroom and wondered where he had gone so early in the morning. I looked at my phone to see if he had texted me. He had. Then I noticed that my phone said it was two fifty in the afternoon. I looked back at my watch and realized I had looked at it upside down, and it was in fact two fifty.
Barbara the Slut and Other People Page 11