I pulled away, but kept my hands on his hips for an extra moment. I nodded and couldn't stop smiling.
Eric took off into the crowd, as I would normally have done, but since Alejandro hung back, I didn't want to leave him alone. Vlad had his shirt off, and several kids were dancing around him in a circle. His eyes were dark and his hair clung to the side of his head and neck in thick wet strands.
“Everyone loves Vlad. Girls, boys, and everyone in between. Right now who would you rather be, him or the girls?”
Alejandro looked at me with a soft indulgent smile and leaned in and spoke into my ear, “Neither. I would rather be talking to you. I don't know anyone who would even think to ask me that, or who thinks the way you do. You're fascinating, you're so unencumbered by expectations. Strong. Not like me.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?” I asked. “After everything I heard from Jasper, I would say you were the strong one.”
He shook his head. “Jasper might say that, though he couldn't have admired me that much or he wouldn't have graduated and never called, never checked in with me even though I sent one letter and left two messages.”
I didn't know what to say. I didn't want to bring up what I knew about him and Jasper, and I didn't want him to shut down if I jumped in with a comment.
The look on his face was full of sincerity. “You've really done something amazing with him.”
I shrugged in agreement. “I'm actually still in awe that he even danced with me, two nights in a row.” I held up the fingers as if to prove it.
“You shouldn't be. If I had half your courage and talent, I would be a different person.” He took my hands lightly in his. “I have never met anyone like you Vivi, and I am sure I never will again.”
I blushed hard, all the way to my chest, back through my hairline and to the depths of my ears.
He dropped my hands and we stood like that, awkward. I wanted to address his last comment, but he seemed to want to let it drop. “Maybe he didn't want to be in your shadow anymore?” I ventured, going back to our original conversation. When he didn't respond right away I said, “Everyone is in his shadow now.”
He turned to me and said, “Not you. Never you. Come on.” He led me out onto the floor and we passed a pleasurable—if not self-conscious—half hour dancing and trying not to catch each other's eyes.
We stopped for a drink, and the smile he gave me when I said I was buying made me give up the pretense of trying not to let him know I was intensely enjoying his company. He followed me up to a sticky table at the top of the balcony where it would be easier to talk.
“So you admire my guts?” I said, hoping to get him to open up again. “Sounds like you had plenty of that if all the people in your class hated what you wrote. That probably meant you were on to something.”
“I wanted to write about a specific immigrant experience. No one wanted to hear that.”
“You mean like about the illegals?”
He put his drink down and set his jaw. “No. That's exactly it. That's all people think about when they hear about people from Mexico, that and gangsters.”
I shifted nervously. I was pretty sure I about to be the receptacle of his pent-up irritation at all people with my skin color.
He leaned forward. “People don't want to hear about, or understand, a father who brought his family up here to live while he conducted research that drug companies were after. Affluence and Latino are two concepts that can't exist together apparently. It is not believable.”
I was annoyed at feeling like the next words out of my mouth would be offensive even though I was trying to be helpful. “In the fiction that your teachers wanted you to write maybe. They worship the white guys like Updike and Cheever, of course they didn't get you.”
He kept his eyes on me but we didn't speak for a long moment. Finally I spoke again, “They bore me to tears. Like the only true view of the world came from the oldest part of the country and from guys just like my dad. They have no concept that there is any other way to see the world, to live in it…”
He shrugged, probably sensing my frustration, so I moved on. “Sorry, I just got so annoyed with watching my brother consume all that shit, and now you're telling me you didn't keep doing something you wanted to do because of them.” After he spent another long minute gazing into his glass, I said in a much more gentle voice, “You still want to write?”
“No. Teaching gives me the same opportunity to get my point across, and I have a reason to travel and read everything I want. I regularly write academic papers and some of these get published, but that isn't even in the same galaxy. Mainly I am just happy if I am reading and spending time with people who care about the same subjects as I do.”
I'm not sure what came over me. I stood and moved behind him and put my arms around his shoulders. I spoke into his ear, “I don't believe you.” His hands moved to my forearms, as if he wasn't sure what to do with himself.
The next day it was time to call Jasper. I wanted to talk to him—I missed him—but wasn't sure how he would respond to my excitement. I didn't want to deal with the glaze on the phone. I had enough people around to be happy for me. I didn't need to have him bring me down with his disapproval and indifference. Maybe I was making more of this than there was. Maybe it was me who wanted him to be more excited. Finally I called him, knowing it was getting late on his side of the country.
“So when were you going to tell me you saw Alejandro?” His voice over the phone was sleepy but good-natured.
“It wasn't like I went out with him,” I stammered. “Eric and I just ran into him.”
He made a noise like he didn't believe me, but then moved on with humor in his voice, “I missed you.”
“Really? It hasn't been that long,” I said, but warmed with happiness that he said it first. So stupid all this dating crap. “When did you talk to Alejandro anyway? I thought you guys didn't talk that much.”
“We don't. He called me.” It sounded like he was sitting up, drawing in a long breath.
“What did he say?”
“Not much, just that you molested him in the dark sweaty depths of your nightclub.” He sounded like he was enjoying himself.
When he didn't answer right away I said, “I just can't believe he let those fucks take something away from him that he wanted to do.”
Jasper laughed. “He said you probably took him too seriously.”
I thought about how else I could proceed and decided to let it drop. “If you thought I was being weird, why didn't you call me?”
“I'm not going to jump on the phone every time you get intimate with another man.” His tone was serious, but I could tell he was joking.
“Oh God. Like I just go around hugging on every guy I meet.”
He plowed on as if he hadn't heard me. “I'd never get anything else done. Now that we're on the phone…I'm just saying.”
Another silence, then after I chewed my thumbnail for a few seconds I said, “It was good to see him though.”
After almost a minute of silence I said, “Is that alright?”
He cleared his throat.
“Jasper?”
“I'm here,” he said. “Just thinking.”
“So you don't like to talk about your friends or what?”
“Of course. That's great. Great.”
To add humor I said, “I think I'll put him in a story. Magnetic. Swarthy. He's got rhythm. He has a beautiful pair of lips. You know I've had dreams about him actually.” That got a laugh out of him and I felt profound relief.
“What else?”
“He's so different from you, it is weird to imagine you as friends…ever,” I said. “Funny to think you ever tried to be like him. You could have been like that guy in the bug story.”
“You mean The Metamorphosis?”
“Yep. Kafka.”
“If you knew that was the name of the story, why didn't you say that?”
“Don't get annoyed. That bugged my brother whe
n I did that too.”
“Well, why do you try to sound like you know less than you do?”
“Why is it so important to sound smart? And why is it more important to know who wrote the story than to know what it said? People like that sound like pretentious assholes. Like my mother's friends.”
“Fine. Never mind…tell me about you and Eric.”
“What about us?”
“Whatever there is to tell…I think it's interesting that your first love was gay.”
“Yeah, not fun.”
“Yeah?”
“I remember that night like it just happened. Do you remember your first time?”
He affected a goofy accent. “Yes, ma'am but mine happened when I was grown. You got busy young.”
“What's wrong with that?”
“Nothing…nothing at all.”
“You know what I think is funny?”
He laughed. “How you're avoiding telling me about this?”
“It could have been worse. At least I loved him. That was better than a lot of my girlfriends got. But the way it worked out did sort of screw up the way I thought about relationships for a while. It took me a couple years to get over the idea that women shouldn't be forward with men. Once I did, I was able to go after who and what I wanted, but it did mess up my game for a while.”
“I see how this could be a problem, especially for you.”
“We did it in his father's Mercedes at the drive-in theater—my pathetic idea. After months of trying to arrange things just so, I had decided I was just going to jump him. I was probably radiating tension. He told me later he knew what was going to happen and had tried to prepare for it.”
“Awkward from the guy's side too. You see.”
“Remind me to grill you later. I thought of us like people in movies. When we danced he would give me these long stares. By the time we were sixteen he was almost six feet tall, and I found every excuse to take his arm and sling it around my shoulder, showing off.”
“Taking after your mother at such a young age…”
“I will tell her you said that.”
He laughed. “Please don't.”
“After the movie got going, I moved to his lap, kissing him.” I paused, letting that sink in, playing up my descriptions as if I were writing a scene. I liked that for once my talents would get me somewhere with him. “I imagined moving on to what I figured—from watching late night movies—he would like, working my tongue in, then back out, moving down to his chest, and unbuttoning his zipper…”
“Hussy,” Jasper breathed into the phone.
I used the smokiest voice I could. “His stomach was tight and firm, short dark hairs rose from the band of his Calvin Klein underwear to circle his bellybutton. I traced the line of hairs down to the dark, coarse mound of hair that felt exotic and forbidden beneath the skin of my palm and fingertips.”
“Okay. Wow. You really remember those details…I'm seeing violets on the horizon.”
I ignored the jab and went on. “I stopped when I saw how big his thing was; it looked like an alien thing with angry purple veins. Since you don't like my details I will leave out the shimmery translucent skin.”
He laughed softly.
“It thumped against his belly until I finally got up the courage to take it in my hand. The texture was silky over weird ridges and spongy thickness.”
Jasper breathed on the other end, but didn't say anything.
“He told me we didn't have to. The way his voice came out in this sort of strained crack made me want to please him more. I wanted to reduce him to groans and murmurs, like the guys in movies when the girl surprises them with sex.”
“Yes, because real life always looks like television.”
“Of course it does,” I said with irritation before I continued, deciding to include the graphic details to goad him. “I hunched down in the seat and put him in my mouth, the end of it smelled like…mushrooms, and on the tip there was something salty and wet. I pinched my eyes closed and put as much of it as I could in my mouth. He groaned and I worked it farther toward the back of my throat, then when he moved to push it farther in, I moved back allowing it to slide out between my lips.
“You still there?”
Jasper responded with a soft noise.
“He got still when I began moving my head up and down. On the movie screen a car chase was going. I wasn't sure if he was watching the movie or I wasn't doing it right, because he got quiet and started to feel softer in my mouth. I lifted my head and looked into his face, his eyes were planted to the ceiling, then he looked down and he gave me this look like he was really sorry.”
“I asked him what I was doing wrong and he moved his head back and forth, bit his lip, and ran his hand over my cheek. He opened his mouth to say something, then his eyes moved to the screen. I turned my head in time to see this hunky blonde actor running around in a torn shirt, and the other guy in the movie was right behind him. Eric worked his hand into my hair, and said, ‘You're doing great, Viv. Like always. You try so hard.’ He moved for me to come up. I got back on his lap; this time, before I did, he worked his hand under my skirt.”
I got silent and waited to see what Jasper would do. This was the equivalent of pulling away and making him come after me, a move I liked to pull in bed and never got tired of.
“Yeah? Then what?” he said in a tight voice.
I waited another few seconds before I continued. I took a breath.
I lit a cigarette.
“This is very childish, Vivianna,” Jasper said in a formal voice.
“Do you want me to continue or not?” I asked in my mother's condescending tone.
In the voice he used only at our most intimate times he said, “You know that I do.”
My stomach fluttered and I got hot all over. “He slid my panties over, and with both hands on my hips he moved me onto him.” I took another moment to drag on my cigarette, let out a slow stream of smoke and continued. “The next thing I knew, he was breathing fast in my ear. His chin was resting on my shoulder, we were joined along the front, just like in a tango, only this time I felt like I was being split open. His hands guided my hips down, and he whispered in my ear, ‘This okay?’”
I was encouraged by the silence on the other end of the line. I could picture Jasper bent near the receiver, hanging on every word. My voice rose one degree but I kept it low. “I told him I was okay and squeezed my eyes shut. Then in a fit of decision, wanting so badly to be different, I let my weight fall and he was all the way inside. Then there was real pain, burning, tearing. For that minute he was a part of me. The pain went all the way to my throat, and at first I couldn't do anything but let him move for the both of us.”
“It doesn't hurt like that every time does it?”
“You're kidding right?”
“I guess. Sorry, tell me the rest.”
“He pushed in harder and I let a sound that was probably like a cry, then slapped my hand over my mouth. That's what did it I think, that's where it ended. He went quiet and made a shushing noise near my face, ran his fingers over my head, down my back, and I moved closer. We both laughed, even though I was dripping big fat tears. He pulled his head back to look at me, he was smiling. I didn't know then how much that freaked him out. I just couldn't believe we had really done it; that was half of the reason I was so sappy and crying. He told me later he thought he had hurt me too much. He made this strangled noise like he was frustrated, the same way he did when he couldn't get his feet in the right spot when we practiced a complicated set of steps, and then everything went slippery and weird between my legs. He made another sound, and then before I knew what was happening, he was lifting me off and pulling my skirt down, moving me to the passenger seat and said, ‘Sorry, Viv.’”
“So he was done?” Jasper asked.
“Yup. I stared at his groin, trying to figure out what happened; he had shriveled to a tiny ball, like a pair of castaway pantyhose. He pulled his jeans up, butto
ning them and held the steering wheel so tight I could see his knuckles, even in the dark.”
Jasper interrupted. “It is fascinating to imagine this after watching the way you two behave with each other now.”
“I think he is so important to me now because we were able to stay friends.”
“So what did he say?”
“‘I can't do it.’ That was all he could say. Then I of course had to make everything worse, and ask him what I did. I thought it was my fault, like there was something wrong with me. It seems really stupid now, but I thought maybe I wasn't hooked up right.”
Jasper made a sound and I could hear him adjusting himself. “I am sorry you ever thought that.”
“Me too,” I said. “A weird thing to look back on. Eric sat there, grinding his teeth and squeezing his eyes shut. After a while he leaned back and watched the screen with this blank look on his face. I don't think I have felt so horribly awkward and tense in my life as I did waiting for that movie to get over. On top of it all I was seriously uncomfortable. The space between my legs was wet and burned then turned to a dull ache. I blamed my eagerness, and ever since then when I see women throw themselves at men, I judge them. It's automatic.
“Tell me an equally horrific story.”
“Some other time.”
I was annoyed that I laid all this out for him without him reciprocating, but I wasn't about to force the issue either.
“I hate the phone,” I said.
“Me too,” he said, a far away squeak signaled he got comfortable in his bed. A rustling of blankets, a poof of air.
I waited for him to say something else, and when he didn't I said, “We've digressed into the stupid what-are-you-doing stage again.”
“I know, that's why I waited for you to call.”
Silence again, then he made a soft sound of contentment, and then there was the sound of the lamp by his bed switching off.
“Going to sleep?” I asked.
“No.”
“Do you want to get off?”
“Maybe,” he said, his voice thick with silly innuendo.
“I mean off the phone,” I said. “I'm not doing phone sex. If you're going to spurt, I want to be there to see every flare of your nostrils, every time you squeeze your eyes shut. You should have gone for the video camera like I told you.”
Sex and Death in the American Novel Page 24