My Worst Date

by David Leddick

  “We’re fine. See you later,” I said, and wandered off to one of those sit-down jobs where you force some enormous weight up with both legs and hope your kneecaps don’t pop off in your face.

  I really looked meager compared to the other guys there. They all had these big leather belts and upper arms like my waist. Most of them aren’t too tall, although some of them were. There’s a lot of that Boys’ Town camaraderie, with slapping on the back and diet exchanges about powder drinks.

  I think they get started thinking they’ll be more attractive to women, and then it dawns on them that actually they’ve made themselves more attractive to men. They stare into the mirror so much that finally the only thing that can satisfy their love would be a body just like their own. Going to bed with one of them would be like climbing in with a couch. And two of them together? Two couches making bamboola. Kind of beyond human. Also, here’s my sex thought for the day. The bigger you get the smaller your penis looks. It’s true. You see these little wiry guys in the showers at gym class at school and they always look like they’ve got quite a bit of equipment there. And the big thugs always seem to not have enough. And probably side by side they’re the same size. One of the magazines had this picture of Arnold Schwarzenegger nude and you think, “A great big guy like that ought to have a great big kazooka.” And then everybody’s talking about compensation. They’re building their bodies because they don’t think their winkie is big enough. I don’t think that’s true. They’re all probably about in the same ballpark, with some exceptions. And there’s that Jeff Stryker out in Hollywood who does the porno films, who’s so famous for his dong. But he’s tiny. He’s a real small guy. Whatever he’s got would look big on him. That’s my theory. If you’re into size, go after the small guys. The optical illusion will please you.

  And what do you know? I see that Yellow Ken is over talking to Macha. He’s showing her how to use the armpit strengthener. And she is being very sassy, of course.

  And so we leave with Ken. After running the gauntlet of the showers and the dressing room. I make a point of not checking out his equipment just so I don’t have to have an opinion for Macha later. He checks mine, I notice. “Got time to have a cup of coffee with us?” I suggest as I’m pulling on my boxer shorts.

  “Macha already suggested that. Yeah, that sounds great. Except I don’t drink coffee.”

  “Well, you could have a diet cola.” He made a face. “Evian?”

  He said, “Something like that.”

  We walk out, leaving behind all the hulks, studiously observing the interiors of their lockers while they pull on their bikini underpants. Don’t let anyone ever say that they made themselves available at the gym.

  We went in Macha’s car down to Arthur Godfrey, to the Purple Banana health food place. Is that name for real?

  A friend of ours from school is our waitress. Minelle Fury. Macha says, “Minelle, what gives with the name of this place? The Purple Banana. Have you ever seen a purple banana? Wait a minute. I didn’t say that.”

  Minelle was wearing her hair pulled up on her head like one of those Betty Grable movies. You know. The bangs come from all the way back on your neck. I think she styles her waitressing on Betty Grable. She holds her little order pad up and says, “Relax, Macha. It’s been the Purple Banana since Arthur Godfrey was around to order our whole wheat blinis. Hi, I’m Minelle,” she adds and reaches across the table to shake Ken’s hand.

  “This is Ken,” Macha says.

  “And I’m Hugo, Minelle,” I tell her.

  “Oh, really, Hugo. Who could miss you?” Minelle tells me. We sit near each other in Speech. We did an improv for them one day where it started out that Minelle was the mother and I was her delinquent son and then halfway through we switched roles. When I said, “And now they tell me you’ve got a tattoo. Where, Freddie? Where?” and Minelle said, “Right on my dick,” it was hot. Even Miss Munro, who is not uncool, laughed and said, “We are definitely starting on radio announcing tomorrow. So I won’t have to hear anything that can’t go on the air.”

  So we ordered our wok-fried green beans and Fourteen Fruits milkshakes (what did I tell you about the name of this place?) and got to know Ken. Did Ken get to know us? Wait and see. Wait and see.

  Ken is from Memphis originally. He graduated from UCLA with a degree in hotel management. He has been in Miami Beach about six months. He works the night desk right at the moment over on the mainland at the Coconut Grove Tropics, the big glamorous hotel over there. But lives in Miami Beach. He’s subletting a little apartment just up the block from the Fountainbleu, which is why he was walking when we picked him up at the gym.

  It didn’t seem to bother Ken that we are high school students. Of course, we are high school students with a difference. There’s probably not a person in our school who wouldn’t say that. Ken didn’t ask us what classes we were taking or what our teachers were like and the usual stuff. He sort of dealt with us as though we were out working somewhere on the night shift ourselves. Which in my case wasn’t so far from the truth. Tomorrow was Friday and I was back at the Bomber Club.

  We dropped Ken off in front of his building and he said, “Maybe the three of us could do something together this weekend. Go to a movie or something like that?” Macha scribbled her number on a piece of paper from a notebook. Ken handed her a card from the hotel. We said probably Sunday. No need explaining the Bomber Club to a nice guy like Ken. But then, everyone seems nice when you first meet them in Miami Beach.

  “What did you think?” Macha asked me. “Is he being sort of fatherly or uncley? We are still in high school.”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe he doesn’t know many people.”

  “The way he looks it shouldn’t be hard,” she said.

  “Maybe he’s entranced with your exotic teenage allure,” I suggested.

  “Or yours,” she said.

  “Please. I’ve got my hands full. And I didn’t get that message, did you?” I asked her.

  “I didn’t get any message,” she said.

  hugo’s sexual history

  Are you sure you want to hear about my sexual history? I thought everybody’s was sort of like mine, but when I start to talk to people I realize it isn’t. Macha, for instance, doesn’t even have a sexual history. Which in all honesty is sort of nice, but I wouldn’t like it. You miss a lot. To put it mildly.

  People are always talking about their virginity, and when they had it. Or lost it. Or whatever. I don’t even remember being a virgin. Well, hardly. When I was in kindergarten I already had a boyfriend. It was really cute, everyone thought. He always said that when he grew up he was going to marry me. I remember thinking there was nothing wrong with this, but I wasn’t sure when the time came that he would be my choice.

  What our teacher, Miss Vanderstealth, didn’t realize was that we were actually getting it on. Randy was precocious, no doubt about it. They sure gave that kid the right name.

  His father had a small but choice collection of pornography that he kept in the night table. Both Randy’s parents worked and he was left with a Colombian maid a lot so he explored the house. I think he probably learned to read looking at those magazines. Randy’s folks lived in the same building we did. And they were always eager that Randy and I spend a lot of time to gether. And after I discovered what Randy was up to, I was always willing to go over and play.

  I mean, this wasn’t anything decadent. It was just sort of one step from playing doctor. But we would get undressed and Randy would climb on top of me and punka-punka. What could happen? We would look at the magazines and make punka-punka and we thought it was fun. It was fun. I guess we just thought we were doing what his parents did in their spare time.

  Anyway. I never felt guilty about it. It was just how things were.

  And do I still see him? Socially. Sexually? Not really. He’s one year ahead of me in high school here. He graduates this year.

  I don’t know. Maybe it’s something about me
. But when you get to be that age—eleven or twelve—where you start staying overnight with your pals, all my pals seemed to be interested in sex. Maybe it’s the tropics. That’s how you learn to masturbate. Flog the dog. Pull your pudding. Wank. But the first time I had an orgasm it was having sex—with a friend of mine named Phil. Of course I jumped up and said, “Wait a minute. I’ve got to pee.” Of course nothing happened. And I began to get the idea. It’s fun, you know. Here you’ve got this thing that belongs to you and you can have fun with it, all by yourself. I don’t blame women for having penis envy. It’s something to envy, it really is. Just from a toy standpoint.

  My worst sexual experience. It didn’t warp me, but I don’t know why. It was with Phil’s father. I sometimes think Phil and he set it up. We were at Phil’s. We sort of knew his father was in the house. I was lying under Phil, while he flailed around on top of me. We must have been about ten. The door was open a crack and I looked into that black slit and thought, someone could be watching. And a moment later Phil’s dad walked in. He didn’t seem upset. He came over and looked at my cock while we were leaping around getting dressed. Then he said, “I want to show you something,” and sat down on the other side of the bed and pulled open his pants. I remember he took a neatly folded white handkerchief out of his pocket and opened it so he could wank on into it. He started and then insisted Phil take a hand at it. I stood at the end of the bed gripping the footboard, frozen. It wasn’t so disgusting. It was just simply beyond anything I had ever experienced. Then he asked me to come over. I said, “No, thank you.” Well brought up, right? Then he said that if I didn’t want him to tell my mother I would have to. So I came over and relieved Phil of his duty. Pulling on that rubbery old World War II cock was no pleasure, let me tell you. It just wasn’t sexual. I can remember thinking that this was something children shouldn’t be doing. It never occurred to me to run out or wonder what he’d tell my mother exactly without incriminating himself. Finally he took over and brought himself off into his handkerchief and then neatly zipped up his pants and walked out. He was wearing jockey shorts, which has kind of left me outside the Calvin Klein jockey shorts sex-symbol explosion. Phil’s father was sort of devilish-looking, evil. I went home and sat in a chair and looked out the window and felt sort of upset to my stomach. But you know how kids are, they forget or it all becomes part of the drill.

  Another time I was at Phil’s in his room. We had been reading and Phil had to go on an errand. While I was lying there the old man came in and sat behind me on the bed where I was lying on my side reading. He touched my butt with his hand and said, “Is that where Phil does things to you?” This time I had the presence of mind to just get up and go home.

  And it’s only recently I’ve been wondering if Phil and he kind of set these situations up. And if I wasn’t the only one. I mean, if the old fart wanted to score with kids, that was one sure way not to make it, right? The will to fail. You see it all the time.

  That was the worst. The best so far was George, the guy on the football team I was in love with last year. We never slept together, but we really have had a kind of love affair. I was in high school assembly and I saw him with another guy from the team walking across the stage setting up some equipment or something. And I was just struck with this feeling. You know, that electric charge. Maybe I just needed to have some electric fascination for someone and George came along at the right moment. But anyway, there it was.

  I know some of the guys that ran around in his crowd so I started hanging out more with them, and then George would be around when we went to the movies. And we’d talk, and eventually George and I would be going to the movies by ourselves. Oh, I can be crafty when I want to be.

  What’s he like? He’s sort of innocent, sure. At least for me. He has this kind of pale, muscular body without much hair. I think his family is Polish or Czechoslovakian or something. And this roundish face with roundish blue eyes. I sound like I’m describing a doll, don’t I?

  We go down to the beach at night and talk a lot, and we hold hands and sometimes he puts his arms around me and I lean back against him. He sort of likes to do light necking with me, but I get the idea that he doesn’t really register what he’s doing. And I think he double-dates with some of his other pals and goes and nails girls who are really available. But I don’t think he connects the two things. Weird, huh?

  Well, anyhow, that was my big romance till Mr. Paul hove into view. So you see I don’t really have a lot of experience, but I think I have a knack for love. I mean, it’s really important to me. More important than having the lead in the class play or being big on the sports team. Or even making money. I really want to be in love and I think I could really be in love with Mr. Paul. Where could it go? Who knows? Not far. But far enough for me to find out what it feels like to have a real love affair. Of course, I imagine that he’s going to want to stay with me forever and we’re going to go away to a desert island or something and be happy forever. Right? I can dream, can’t I? I’m not really that crazy, really. But when you’re in love you kind of live in two levels. Your imaginary one, and on track two you sort of keep going along in the world of reality.

  iris mulls it over

  Miami Beach is very treacherous. You step out the front door in the evening. The clouds rise up black against the sky, pink from the light from Miami across the bay. The trade winds clack the palm leaves against each other and flow over your skin, which feels warm and glows from a late-afternoon swim. The moon hangs up there in a sky that is navy blue to the east. You’re all in white. Convertibles are moving slowly down the street in what is forever a summer night. Why wouldn’t you fall in love with whoever pulls up in front of your house in their convertible? It’s almost an obligation. Like a Fitzgerald novel you’re never going to get out of. And they all end so badly. But you’re sure yours won’t.

  Until Hugo was six, romance didn’t really matter. I had my hands full changing diapers, finding nursemaids, paying the rent, modeling. But since we’ve come down here and I’m working in real estate, I’ve thought of a father for him and a hubby for me. Obviously, no one has turned up. Part of it has to have been my fault. I don’t think I was really in the market. Or else I’m just stuck in some kind of teenage romantic mode so no one is really good-looking enough or interesting enough or nice enough.

  Everything is like a speeded-up movie in Miami Beach. Or an LP playing at 78. What takes months or years to happen in the temperate zone just zips by here. Restaurants open. They’re popular. They’re gone. People meet, fall in love, get married, fall out of love, get divorced, and it’s only eighteen months later. Maybe it’s because we’re always under this tropical moon. All we’ve got is the rainy season to tell us another year has actually gone by. Otherwise, it’s always the same time.

  So Hugo has never really had a father and it doesn’t seem to bother him. He just came out of the womb sensible. Even as a little boy you could explain to Hugo why he couldn’t have something or why he had to wait and he’d sober right up. He always wanted to be neat, hang things up, put things away. I never really needed a man around to keep him in line. He was always ready to help me with the dishes and do the laundry. And now our Mr. Paul shows up and I’m right back where I was before I even had Hugo. Very attracted to a guy I know nothing about. Another good-looking man in a town full of good-looking men with no real story. Where do they come from? What have they been doing before they came to Miami? You know they have to be con artists of one kind or another and you’re just standing around, shifting from one foot to the other, waiting to be conned.

  iris and glenn dine out

  I really wanted to talk to Glenn Elliott. There were some things I wanted to sort out. Like his money. Where did it come from and what was he doing with it? So often with men you assume they know what they’re doing because they act like they know what they’re doing. And then suddenly you realize they don’t have it together at all. And things fall apart. Things fall apart mostly just after
I’ve met them. Scenario. I meet handsome, intelligent guy with money. We kind of reach an understanding. Then it turns out he owes money. Lots of money. Then it turns out that he is prone to depression. Lots of depression. Plenty able to handle all this until he meets me. Then once on the solid ground of my life, kaflooey, his life falls apart. With Glenn, I’d sort of like to get a little hint of this in advance if I can.

  So Wednesday night I asked him to go to the Mulberry Street Cafe with me. Hugo was going to the roller hockey game with Macha and his new friend Fred so I didn’t have to get dinner. I like the Mulberry Street, the tables are far enough apart that you can talk. And the ceilings are high. I hate New York restaurants because the ceilings are low, the noise level is unbearable, and you’re always jammed in cheek by jowl with someone named Dana who is telling her best girlfriend about her abortion, ignoring the fact that her elbows are touching strangers on either side.

  Glenn Elliott was looking cute. He is such a cute guy with his little short haircut and his navy blue blazer. One of those guys who know absolutely nothing about fashion but always knows what looks good on them and how to maximize their cuteness. It’s kind of a European thing. Nothing effeminate about it but well put together. And good shoes. Always good shoes.

  After we ordered Glenn said, “Well what is it we must talk about?” “Did I say we must talk about something?” I said.

  “Iris, let’s face facts. We’ve been seeing each other for a few months. We like each other. We’ve had some fairly dramatic sexual episodes. And you haven’t made any moves to advance our relationship, or drop it. You’ve been very cool. So obviously the time has come to discuss what’s going on.”

  “You’re a real gentleman, Glenn,” I told him. “But actually I wanted to talk about money.” He had a slightly apprehensive look since he’d picked me up but now he laughed and took off his jacket and hung it over the back of his chair. “Okay, let’s talk about money then. Yours? Mine? Where to get it?”