by Peter Gault
Heather arranged to meet me for a coffee. I arrived early, feeling anxious and fidgety because I always felt anxious and fidgety about a woman I had slept with more than three times. I got this paranoid feeling that I was her boyfriend and she was my girlfriend. That was what I thought I wanted, but when things began to move in that direction, I felt an urgent need to hide in the nearest closet or submerge myself in a body of water with a snorkel, where no one could shatter my privacy. I considered wearing dark sunglasses so I could see her and she couldn’t see me, but there was something immoral about that.
“You smell nice,” she said to me once, after having sex, which was a sure sign she was falling in love. It’s always the smell you fall in love with first, and that stays with you the longest.
I loved Heather, or at least something moved inside me periodically when we were together, especially when we were together in bed. But it certainly wasn’t a monogamous kind of love. It wasn’t the kind of love that could grow into something exclusive, unique, and romantically self-contained. It was the love I felt for many women. What was the magic ingredient that made me feel a psychic attraction to one woman over all others? Why could one woman cause me to be consumed by an eternal fire and another woman, equally attractive and suitable, only spur my emotions momentarily? What did that special woman have that I needed so passionately? What was it that touched my heart? Silly things! The way she brushed her teeth using a toothbrush with flattened bristles or how she looked when she was naked and blow-drying her hair after a shower or the way she pronounced my name. I could feel it if I overheard her use my name in a conversation with her friend or if someone said something nasty to me at a party and she defended me. I loved that kind of woman.
I looked down at my bowl of Alphabits. The word I had spelt on my spoon was “Elizabeth.” I swallowed it.
Henry Kissing-Balls landed in the seat across from me with a trayload of food. For breakfast he was having a hamburger, french fries with gravy, a Coke and a chocolate donut for dessert. He looked disheveled and worn, a couple of pimples breaking out around his mouth.
“That’s disgusting!” I said, referring to his meal.
“What?” asked Henry innocently.
“How can you eat that crap for breakfast?” I said with paternal indignation. “You have the unhealthiest diet of anyone I’ve ever seen. It’s amazing you’re still alive.”
“This stuff is good for you,” claimed Henry firmly. He stuck his fork into a few french fries and dipped them into a puddle of grease, gravy, and ketchup.
Henry caused my motherly instincts to surface. I nagged him to eat properly and to get enough sleep. He was a helpless child without me. Philosophy majors lack a practical understanding of survival and of pleasurable living. You have to tell them everything. While their minds busily attempt to comprehend the universe, you have to remind them to wear a sweater when it’s cold, eat when they’re hungry, sleep when they’re tired. Otherwise the philosopher gets mixed up. He’ll wear a sweater when he’s hungry and eat when he’s tired. I lectured Henry to get sun on his face. The sun would inject vitamin D into his system and clear up the pimples forming near his mouth. Henry was trying to stop overworking his brain and let the other parts of his character catch up. He needed to return to earth and be with people again after drifting alone in the cosmos for so many years. He needed to develop an awareness of his senses, a sensitivity to the physical world.
“Two condoms weren’t enough,” said Henry boastfully. He couldn’t wait to tell me.
“Congratulations, you big hunk of bisexual, you,” I said. “At least you know you can still do it with a woman. Have you told Chris? He’ll probably blame me. I actually do deserve some of the credit. I’ve given you moral support.”
“When we got into that bed, it was just me and her. No one else was around to help me. I rose to the occasion, and not once, not twice, but three times although I couldn’t do it the third time because I had no condoms left.”
“Don’t let it go to your head and start acting tough. You haven’t set any world records yet.”
“Are you still assembling the largest harem in North America?” asked Henry.
“I’m trying to cut down … but Rome wasn’t built in a day.”
The cereal didn’t curb my appetite. Henry was fishing through the gravy for the last few french fries. He dunked his hamburger in the gravy. There was enough grease on his plate to make Stockton the lube job capital of the world. My skin felt slimy just looking at it. I envisioned Henry’s face sprouting pimples like dandelions.
“Mmmm! Delicious!” exclaimed Henry, sipping his Coke and moving on to the donut for dessert.
“You’re making me sick,” I muttered, unable to suppress my motherly instincts. I couldn’t leave the subject alone. “That meal’s as fattening as hell.”
“That feels much better,” said Henry, ignoring me and holding his stomach. “It finally came to me last night, after sex, that first line of poetry. Only it wasn’t a poem. It came as the first line of a novel, a poetic novel.”
“What’s the line?”
“You won’t understand it yet.”
“Tell me anyway.”
“The first line is, ‘I like to be a little person, unable to affect people.’”
“What’s the novel going to be about?” I asked. He was right. I didn’t understand.
“It’s about being young, virile, and sexually frustrated.”
“Sounds good,” I said. I could understand that!
“That first line,” said Henry with a strange confidence which I had never seen in him before, “is a kernel of wisdom that will flower into great social change. My brain is teeming with thoughts. I have this character inside my head. That first line captures his spirit. Everything about him, what he will go through, how he will change, is consistent with that first line, that first line of poetry.”
Henry stared at me forcefully, burped forcefully, farted forcefully, and left the table laughing forcefully.
“You’re a pig,” I said forcefully, pushing his greasy tray to the next table. The truth was that I liked it when Henry farted. When other people farted, I found it offensive and juvenile. When Henry farted it was funny. He wasn’t the kind of guy you expected to fart.
“I’m going to put some good farting scenes in my book,” said Henry gleefully, waving good-bye and bobbing brilliantly. “I like a book with good farting scenes.”
The Artsie Fartsie was an informal atmosphere, to say the least, and when the old ladies were busy, I was allowed to wander behind the counter and make myself something to eat. It was a privilege granted solely to the regulars. I preferred to make my own peanut butter sandwiches because no one else spread on quite enough peanut butter. I liked a generous serving of peanut butter.
When I lifted the top and peered into the jar, however, I was stung by such a scary sensation that my breathing stopped, and I wasn’t capable of moving a single part of my body. It was a flash of déjà vu, and I was frozen to the spot. My life was condensed into one moment, past and present fused, and I fell into a pit of timelessness. Inside the jar of peanut butter, shaped unwittingly by past peanut butter users, was an exact replica of The Barren Room.
My head whirled, I swayed dizzily and had to cling to the counter. I felt like I was toppling over and over again like a barrel rolling down a hill, bouncing unevenly at first and gradually gaining momentum. I caught glimpses of things above and below me, a tottering ceiling tile, a dirty piece of paper stuck to the linoleum floor, a stain on the counter.
In my mind, I rolled head over heels off the counter and onto the floor. I was rolling and rolling and rolling, rolling in The Barren Room. I struggled to remember if I had been drinking, if I was drunk, if it was night and I was at a bar, my head spinning from beer. I couldn’t remember drinking. I remembered nothing. It came to me, suddenly, in a frightening wave, that I had to stop rolling or I would die. The forward roll perpetuated itself like a metronome on top
of a piano. If I allowed it, it would take me to a place from which I could never return. I concentrated on arresting the movement, pulling out of the spin. My early attempts were ineffectual. My head slowed down and finally stopped. I returned the lid to the peanut butter jar without making my sandwich.
I sat in my seat with a cup of tea, trembling, immensely relieved, appreciative of my sanity and my self-control. My time of privacy and solace was brief. Heather took the seat in front of me.
She looked exceptionally sexy with dark hair and dark eyes and clearly erect dark nipples pressed against a white blouse. She wasn’t wearing a bra. I wanted to touch her little breasts with the big dark nipples. My mind clouded and my eyes fogged. Inside my pants, I was thick and hard. I wanted to drag her into the bushes behind The Artsie Fartsie and make love against a tree. I struggled not to think of her crotch. If I let myself think of her crotch, it would be all over. Heather sat up and kissed me and sat back in her chair.
“Heather, we’re finished,” I said softly, almost crying myself. I couldn’t think of a more tactful way of putting it. Our relationship is on the roof, I thought of saying. It would have been an inappropriate time for a joke.
It took a few seconds for the statement to sink in. I read her face. Her eyes looked hurt and moist, but she didn’t cry or get hysterical. We hadn’t known each other long enough to justify a tearful scene. I could have hung around a few years, played the role of boyfriend, benefited from that juice a man gets from a woman, but I couldn’t give her the kind of love she wanted, the kind she deserved. Staying with her would have been an act of cynicism. It would have been cowardly and corrupt.
“Why?” she asked. The question was as inevitable as death.
“Because I’m in love with someone else.”
“Who?” her voice cracked. I wished I could make her happy and feeling good about herself. I wished I could make everyone happy and feeling good about themselves. I was having a hard enough time making me happy and feeling good about myself.
“Elizabeth,” I said.
“She’s dead,” exclaimed Heather tactlessly.
“Not in my mind. In my mind she’s alive and with me every day. Whenever I sleep alone, I sleep with her. Whenever I beat off—I still beat off an awful lot, by the way, especially during exams for some reason or after a day in the library—in my mind, I’m making love to Elizabeth. Sometimes I bump into a girl in an elevator or sit beside a girl in class and she smells like Elizabeth. The smell burns into me. The smell hurts. I’ll see a girl with a long mane of wavy hair like Elizabeth’s hair, and it takes all my will power not to stick my face in it, or at least play with it with my hand. Once I actually did it. This girl was sitting in front of me on the bus. I grabbed a handful of her hair and stuck my face into it. She got angry and threatened to get the bus driver and call the police. I pretended I was retarded; retarded people do that type of thing. It was a great acting job. I told her that if she called the bus driver, I’d shit in the aisle. She felt sorry for me and only made me promise not to do it any more. I met her later at Ring Stadium and we ended up getting along very …”
“I thought you were over Elizabeth,” interrupted Heather, her anger visibly rising. “You acted so cheerful and optimistic. What was I to you? You’ve been living out a fantasy about your old girlfriend through me. I’ve been used as a watered-down substitute for Elizabeth.”
“Not at all,” I said. I hoped my voice sounded comforting. “You were a very good substitute.”
That was the wrong thing to say. She got even angrier. She said, “The only good thing about our relationship was fucking.” She was trying to sting me back.
“At least that was good,” I said.
“Elizabeth’s been dead for almost a year.”
“That’s not a very long time,” I said. “I do feel something for you. I’m not fantasizing about Elizabeth while I’m making love to you. When I’m with you, I’m with you, mostly. It’s when I’m alone that I’m with Elizabeth, that I feel her presence.”
“You don’t look miserable and heartbroken to me.”
“I’m happy,” I said. “Elizabeth doesn’t interfere with that. She’s not on my mind so much as she’s in my mind. I’m not usually conscious of her, but she’s there, inside me, dominating my dreams at night. We occupy the same body.”
“I feel sorry for you,” she said, at a time when I was busy feeling sorry for her. “Why is it I meet nothing but fucked up men? Maybe all men are fucked up.”
“It could be,” I said. I didn’t really believe that, but I was doing my best to make her feel better. I believed that men and women were equally fucked up.
“I read in the paper,” continued Heather, “that a man in Stockton is grabbing five-year-old girls off the street in broad daylight and raping them. That makes me want to throw up.”
“I didn’t do it,” I said.
“I know,” laughed Heather scornfully. “You’re a nec-rophiliac.”
“I dwell a bit on the past. That doesn’t make me a necrophiliac.”
Heather was the first bridge I burned. I had a lot of burning left to do. I had to be there one hundred percent, one hundred percent aware, one hundred percent tuned into a woman, or I didn’t want to be there at all, at least not for more than two or three nights. I couldn’t be half or three-quarters or nine-tenths in love. It was everything or nothing, or almost nothing, maybe a little sex now and then. It wasn’t that I expected serenity from a relationship. I was open for disputes, but I had to be there, right with her, all of me, one hundred percent. It’s that limbo area where you’re with someone and yet somehow far away that creates dead people. There’s a lot of dead people walking around the street, numb to life, and that’s the reason they’re dead. They can’t get close to anything.
Eventually, Heather’s tone of voice softened. At last we made that resolve which everyone makes and almost no one keeps for any length of time when they break up. We promised to be friends. The only thing I wanted to do was get out of The Artsie Fartsie and be alone. I would have promised to be anything, friend, enemy, father, mother. I would have allowed her to give me a swift kick in the balls as penance if I was guaranteed she’d leave me alone afterwards.
It was a short walk from The Artsie Fartsie to the athletic center. The campus was crawling with rapists and child molesters, hiding in the shade of the trees, glaring malevolently out of shifty eyes. Every male I passed was a filthy pervert. I tried to imagine myself raping a five-year-old girl, her hairless little body, pigtails, tears streaming down her face, uncomprehending fear. It was a monstrous act. I could never perform such a heinous desecration. What if I was locked away in a library for a year, deprived of the God-given privilege of every free man to masturbate, forced to ferment in my lust by a cruel and sadistic torturer? What then? Could I be driven to it? Sanity has its limits.
The summer heat made my beard itchy. After dumping my knapsack in my locker in the athletic center, I took my leather kit bag and placed it on the sink. Timing was of the utmost importance. I glanced obsessively at the clock on the wall of the change room, disrobed, and stood naked in front of the mirror. The occasional naked stranger passed by dripping from the shower, too preoccupied with his own body to notice me. I removed the instruments of my symbolic rebirth from the kit bag, shaving cream and a razor blade.
“Off with the mask,” I exclaimed to myself theatrically.
It was the unveiling of a masterpiece, a classical sculpture. My face was slowly exposed; shaving off a beard is a tedious process. I felt a slight prickle of enthusiasm, then a growing excitement, and finally an incredulity; surely I wasn’t that good-looking. I had forgotten about the sensual dimple on the chin, the perfectly formed jaw, the finely chiseled features. Covering my face had been a criminal offense.
“I forgot how good-looking I am, but only briefly,” I said to myself.
Time was running out. I dried myself and swung the towel around my neck. My face was bleeding in a coup
le of spots, and I dabbed on tiny squares of toilet paper. The toilet paper gave me character. White shorts, white socks, both freshly washed, and running shoes were added. The clock ticked. Classes ended in thirty seconds and I intended to be caught in the rush. I applied the baby oil, just the right amount to darken the skin. It made me glow without being obvious that I was wearing oil at all. I tied on my dirty red bandanna. The effect was sublime. I felt a surge of love for myself and my body exuded high-voltage energy.
I romped and frolicked happily through a crowd of students pouring out of the Landscape Architecture Building. There was something sexually alluring about women who majored in Landscape Architecture. A pretty girl stepped in front of me. I bumped into her in a miraculously gentle manner, like a slow motion embrace, both of us tumbling painlessly to the sidewalk. I lifted her up and apologized profusely; she profusely reassured me it was all right. I made a great fuss as to whether I had hurt her, inspecting her knees and questioning her on the workableness of each body part. She promised that everything was in working order. I said that I believed her. She smiled. I smiled.
I continued my run, unable to shake the idiot grin off my face. It felt good to be a full-fledge golden boy again. I sprinted down a road that cut through the heart of the university. The sidewalks were flowing rivers of students. The wind filled my sails. There were jealous, adoring, and lustful eyes on me. It was impossible not to look at me, sailing down the middle of the street practically naked, surrounded by the mass movement of students. I loved being watched. Someone whistled at me. There was sprinkled giggling. I ran even faster and fought to suppress my grin.