by Peter Gault
Elizabeth had an uncanny intuition for anticipating my arrival. I had my fist raised and positioned to knock at the door; it swung open and I almost punched Elizabeth in the forehead. She pressed her voluptuous body against mine and kissed me. The music throbbed in the basement like a swollen penis. It was an affectionate reception, almost too affectionate. Elizabeth had a way of not looking at me, of turning her head away. Something was bothering her, too.
“You’re missing a wild party,” said Elizabeth. “My parents’ friends are going wild. The dance floor has been full all night. It’s wild! My parents were asking about you. They’ll be glad you came. It’s wild down there. You don’t have to stand behind the bar all night. You can go wild, too.”
Elizabeth was trying to convince me about what great fun her parents were. She was challenging me. Am I man enough for that much wildness? A brick wall was separating Elizabeth and me, with a single brick missing around the crotch area for screwing purposes. We communicated through our genitals. The missing brick was the one that hit me on the head. We were full of adult emotion and passion, but the mechanisms necessary for dealing with these things were woefully infantile. The brick wall was getting bigger, bigger than us. It lacked supports and threatened to fall down, like a scene from TV commercials sponsored by Allstate Insurance. We would discover who really had the hardest head.
“Is it true you headed a brick?” asked Elizabeth.
“Look!” I said, pointing to my purple wound.
“Thank God it’s just a scratch.”
“That’s no scratch. That’s a gaping cavern,” I protested.
“Why did you head it?” she asked.
“I was trying to commit suicide so that I wouldn’t have to come to this wild party tonight,” I said, trying to laugh as good-naturedly as possible. Elizabeth turned her head, pretending not to hear the comment.
Elizabeth inherited that trait. The Baldwins were forever pretending. They pretended to like me. They pretended there was nothing to life but Ajax, clean walls and auto parts stores. They pretended that Elizabeth was a virgin, that sex never existed in connection with their daughter, at least until marriage. They knew better, of course—no one could be that dense—but they pretended anyway. I was brought up differently. My mother, for example, kept condoms in a candy bowl by the front door for the use of the whole household. It was sad the Baldwins needed to pretend so much. It consumed a lot of energy.
Downstairs, boldly stretching across the dance floor, were the letters “Happy Anniversary.” I recognized Elizabeth’s workmanship. She contrasted primary colors and the effect was stunning. It made the room vibrant. Elizabeth liked bold colors in dress, design, and boyfriends. I felt she had a knack for visual arts, but she didn’t seem interested in anything except getting me to like her parents and her parents to like me, which was a losing battle and not even necessary. Elizabeth was desperate for harmony. She responded to disharmony by turning her head. Her pretty head wasn’t hard enough.
Elizabeth’s pudgy cousin stood dumbly behind the bar, looking like a prize pig in a butcher shop window. I had forgotten his name, so I made one up. “Hi Porky,” I said happily, patting his protruding tummy. “The women are taking some nice hot lasagna and garlic bread out of the oven. If you’re hungry, you better get up there before it’s gone.” Porky fell for it. There was no lasagna or garlic bread, but I was confident he would find something to eat in the kitchen. I claimed the position of bartender.
Being separated behind the bar and elevated on a stool gave me a feeling of superiority. I hated jostling with the common people. The dance floor was packed, everyone bouncing to the disco beat and hanging themselves on Elizabeth’s colorful “Happy Anniversary.” They were Sears Auto patrons run amok. Everyone was best friends and had known each other since the beginning of time, since before the advent of Brick Soccer.
Middle-aged men smell horrible after a night’s drinking. I pitied the women for what they would have to put up with in the morning. It wasn’t just the inevitable gas. It wasn’t just bad breath. Foul smells seemed to ooze through their skin and smear on the sheets. I was particularly sensitive to smells. If a girl stank, I wouldn’t touch her, no matter how beautiful and willing she was. I would never be able to forgive her. The thought of getting a whiff of those men in the morning was making me nauseous again.
Mr. Simmons came to the bar with a smile on his face the size of a billboard. I didn’t think of Mr. Simmons as a real person. He was The Friendly Neighbor, the personification of all neighbors, an archetype. He was immortal. You couldn’t blast the smile off his face with a Sears store full of dynamite. Why did I have Mr. Price for a neighbor? Price didn’t have a billboard smile. He dragged the dead weight of his misery around like a lawn mower through a wheat field.
“How they hanging, Ken?” said Mr. Simmons gamely.
“Down to my knees,” I said, which was the stock reply, and, in my case, a gross exaggeration.
Mr. Simmons laughed as I gave him a cold beer. I watched his massive hand wrap the bottle. I noticed hands because I had heard that it was possible to judge the size of a man’s penis by his hands. The Friendly Neighbor was hung down to his knees.
“I understand you’ll be going to college next year,” said Mr. Simmons, his face becoming serious and intent. “Good for you. It’ll be the best years of your life. That’s the place to sow your wild oats and prepare yourself for settling down with that little lady of yours. Elizabeth! She’s lovely. I’ve watched her grow up.”
Mr. Simmons acted like he was in the know, hinting about that exclusively male need for a stage of sexual experimentation and promiscuity. What he didn’t realize was that that little lady of mine was rather horny herself. Besides, there was no guarantee that I would want to return to my blushing virgin, which was what Elizabeth was supposed to be. Maybe I’d fall in love with one of the sluts. I wondered if college would be the best years of my life. (“If a university is the best years of your life,” I said to myself years later, after attaining my degree, “I’ve got fuck-all to look forward to.”)
The song was finished and there was a rush for the bar. The next song was slow and romantic. I was serving a few people, but Mr. Simmons hung onto his position, and the dialogue continued.
“You think you’re smart,” said Mr. Simmons argumentatively, as though he could read my mind. “You want to know what life’s about. I’ll show you.” His huge hand pointed to the dance floor, where Mr. and Mrs. Baldwin were locked in each other’s arms, swaying to the music. “Need I say more? I rest my case.” He gave me that billboard smile and went to mix with his friends.
After twenty-five years of marriage, Mr. and Mrs. Baldwin were a picture of love. I’m as sentimental as the next guy, and the scene moved me. I imagined them as the same age as Elizabeth and me. Mrs. Baldwin had sex appeal for a woman her age, but the old man needed some work, about forty pounds’ worth. Was this the shadow of the future, of my future with Elizabeth?
“Blah! Suburbia! It’s destroying my mind,” I said to myself.
Elizabeth came down the stairs, leaned against the wall, and watched her parents on the dance floor. She was beaming. There was no one more thrilled about this happy anniversary than Elizabeth. It was an affirmation and celebration of her values, of Mr. Simmons’ values, and her confidence was soaring. Her happiness was dependent on the level of cohesion in her parents’ relationship, which made me jealous. I felt excluded. I had overcome that childish dependence when my parents divorced five years ago. Elizabeth was an only child, the focal point of the Baldwin universe, and perhaps it was more difficult for her.
Elizabeth looked like a little girl as she skipped towards me, got behind the bar, and sat on my stool. I was in the process of serving a rye and water. I could feel her playing with my testicles under the bar.
“On the rocks, sir?” I asked. Elizabeth giggled as the man walked away.
“Did you tell my cousin we had made lasagna and garlic bread?” asked
Elizabeth.
“Yes.”
“He was so upset I had to order him a pizza. How’s your forehead? It’s dangerous to sleep when you’ve had a bad bump on the head. You’re supposed to have someone wake you up every few hours.”
I loved it when Elizabeth took a maternal interest in me. I said, “The doctor told me I had to ejaculate every four hours or I’d die of a concussion.” I studied the clock behind the bar. “I’ve seven minutes. If I go into a coma, give me a blow job and it’ll bring me back to life.”
“Don’t be rude,” said Elizabeth encouragingly, her hand on my testicles.
“Gin!” I looked up. It was Mr. Baldwin. Elizabeth’s hand dropped from my crotch. “And tonic,” he said.
It was as if Mr. Baldwin and I were from different planets. We could manage primitive hand signals, communicate “hello” and “good-bye,” but anything beyond that was an impossibility. I had more sophisticated intellectual banter with Shultz than with Mr. Baldwin. There was no real hostility between us, nothing concrete, just a deep, unfathomable communication gap. I wracked my brain for something to say, a topic that held a mutual interest. There was nothing. To my utter amazement, we didn’t have a single thing in common except Elizabeth, but I couldn’t very well discuss his daughter’s wonderful technique at fellatio. Fathers are unreasonable about that type of thing.
“You two having a good time?” asked Mr. Baldwin.
“Great,” answered Elizabeth, speaking for both of us.
I noticed that Mr. Baldwin’s hands were the same size as mine. We had one thing in common, the size of our genitals.
“Have you seen that little lady of mine?” said Mr. Baldwin, referring to that little wife of his. “Every time we finish dancing she disappears somewhere.”
“I’ll go see if she’s upstairs, Dad,” said Elizabeth, who was hyper co-operative when it came to getting her parents together. “Ken,” she said, to placate me, “come upstairs in a while and we can sit together in the living room.” Sex hint. I never missed a sex hint.
Alone with Mr. Baldwin! It was the silent moments that bothered me. I didn’t mind him shouting at me, hitting me on the head with a brick, breathing fire through his nose, anything but silence. Tonight was monumental. Mr. Baldwin and I talked. We didn’t communicate on a stupendously profound level, but there was a verbal exchange of some kind. Elizabeth was right. It was a wild night, beyond my wildest expectations.
“I grew up on the other side of the tracks,” explained Mr. Baldwin. “There was no university for me. My education was on the street, the school of hard knocks. I was taught to work hard and use common sense. I’m damned happy with my life, the advancements I’ve made, what I’ve done for my family. My wife’s family had money. They were sort of upper-class. She was such a snob! I always thought she deserved to be brought down a peg or two. She knew nothing about the real world, still doesn’t. I’ve protected her from that.”
Why was he justifying his life to me? Mr. Simmons did the same thing. Was my face broadcasting disapproval? Was I challenging him?
“You should be proud, Mr. Baldwin,” I said sincerely. “You’ve done very well for your family.”
“Young people won’t listen nowadays,” continued Mr. Baldwin, visibly perking up and gaining confidence. I was getting bored already and having trouble listening. “They’ve had it too easy. Most of them are lazy and irresponsible. In my day you knew what you had to do. After you got married, you concentrated on your career, worked your butt off for the firm. The economy is getting bad in this country. Unemployment. B.A. means Bugger-All. They’re all unemployed too.”
The conversation was getting me horny. I kept thinking of Elizabeth alone upstairs. Mr. Baldwin sounded like a broken record. As I said before, I didn’t believe whatever it was he was trying to tell me, especially the bit about economics. I felt he was painting a bleak picture of the world to rationalize his own lack of initiative, to rationalize his paranoid security-conscious existence. He had an altered perception of reality: The Loop strewn with starved carcasses of unemployed intellectuals. It wasn’t true. Americans lived like kings, comparatively speaking, and yet they were perpetually moaning about being maltreated and hard-done-by. There’s a two thousand-mile wheat field in the middle of our country, and we can’t stop worrying about not having enough cereal for breakfast.
We were distracted by the sudden upsurge of the song, “Happy Anniversary.” Mr. Simmons acted as conductor.
I took the opportunity to dash upstairs and seek refuge in the washroon. I opened my shirt, pulled down my pants and underwear, and stared at myself in the mirror. “If I had seven inches, I’d have everything,” I said to myself sadly. Although it looked larger than usual, it was far short of the seven-inch ideal. When I didn’t masturbate for a day or two it seemed to get bigger; now was the time to show it to Elizabeth. The mirror was well lit and vertical, making it possible to see from the head to the knees, for people like Mr. Simmons who were hung that low.
I imagined myself being photographed in different positions, with different facial expressions, for the front of an album cover, or a Marlboro ad, or the centerfold of a magazine. I had this fantasy about being a world-famous male stripteaser. I was given enormous amounts of money to expose my body. I contributed the money to wife-battery homes, rape-crisis and day-care centers around the country, and became a national hero among women. Feminists were breaking down my door to make love to me. I needed five bodyguards.
I marveled at the fact that that face, and that body and those hands belonged to me. I was convinced they belonged to someone else, a relation, a dear friend whom I had known all my life. The answer to my questions was directly in front of me. “That’s me,” I said in wonderment. My body was the fortress of my wisdom.
Elizabeth ambushed me in the hallway with a hug, laying siege to my fortress. “I heard you talking to yourself again,” she said, “What were you saying?”
“Quick,” I said. “I want to show you something.”
I dragged her into the living room, which was roped off and quarantined with plastic footpaths on the rug and couch. The front room was for show, like Mr. Price’s swimming pool. The room was unused for the obvious reason that it was covered in sheets of plastic and not particularly comfortable. I was strongly averse to covering furniture with plastic. Why not buy plastic furniture?
“Look at this,” I said, pulling out my penis. Although the lights were out, there was enough light to see clearly. “Put it in your mouth before it gets hard.”
“It’s too late,” said Elizabeth. “It’s already hard.”
“That’s not hard. It gets way bigger than that.”
Elizabeth bent down, put it in her mouth, and it was instantly harder. She made a gargling noise while it was in her mouth.
“What?” I said.
She pulled it out long enough to say, “I love you,” and put it back in her mouth.
“I love you too, Elizabeth.”
It was the first time we had confessed to being in love. I felt a flood of excitement. The night was becoming wilder every minute.
That was a special night. That night I discovered the clitoris, and my life would never be the same. It was perhaps the single most important discovery of my life. Elizabeth stood up. Her mouth was red and, as we kissed, I slipped my hand into her panties. I knew that I was onto something good, a pleasure spot, because Elizabeth started making crying noises and repeatedly muttering, “I love you.” She handled my penis with unprecedented aggressiveness. I had never seen a woman orgasm before, except in my imagination, and the reaction scared me. I thought she was in pain or even dying, the way her back arched and her face contorted. She was getting so loud I had to cover her mouth. The whole thing happened while on our feet.
The sound of sperm splattering on plastic was magical, a thing of extraordinary beauty. We fell against the wall hugging each other, my pants around my ankles and her dress up around her neck. It would have been awkward explainin
g this position to Elizabeth’s father. “It’s not what it looks like, Mr. Baldwin,” I said to Elizabeth, teasing her. “I was tucking in my shirt and Elizabeth got a nasty inch in the small of her back …” Mr. Baldwin would pretend to believe me.
Elizabeth sprang into action. She produced a Kleenex out of thin air and scrubbed the floor. I finally realized the rationale behind the plastic floor coverings. I didn’t think old Baldwin had it in him. For her next trick, I expected a bottle of Ajax to materialize. She gave me a kiss and disappeared into the washroom, no doubt to do a cleaning job on her private parts. I let whatever didn’t make it to the floor dry in my underwear.
I was asleep on the couch. Elizabeth woke me by pushing softly on my chest, like a child wanting her father’s attention.
“Are you sleeping?” she asked innocently.
“No,” I whispered faintly. “I’m wide awake.” My sisters complained bitterly about the type of man who falls asleep immediately after sex. They construed it as an insult, like eating and running after a dinner party. I never admitted to it, but, to be perfectly honest, I was exactly that type of guy. I tried to look chipper, but I could barely keep my eyes open.
“Let’s talk,” said Elizabeth spryly, sitting upright on the couch. Some guests were leaving by the front door which was around the corner from our plastic hideaway.
“OK,” I said. “You start and I’ll follow right behind.”
“Did you talk long with my father?” she asked.
“Too long. It was the longest conversation of my entire life.”