Alternatives to Sex

by Stephen McCauley

  Nahant

  We drove for another thirty minutes through a landscape that had been insulted with fast-food joints and injured with car dealerships, and then arrived at a rotary with signs pointing to the causeway that connected Nahant to the mainland. There was a deserted tennis court on one side of the road, and on the other, a lonesome bathhouse that looked as if it hadn’t been in use for several decades. The causeway itself curved slightly so that for the entire two-mile stretch of road, it was impossible to see more than a few feet in front of you at a time. This created the illusion that you could be driving along this road forever or, a reasonable alternative, that you were about to drop off into the open water. Suddenly, all traces of the city and scarred industrial landscape seemed to have been washed out by the tide.

  There was one main road that circled the perimeter of the island. A sandy lowlands planted with windswept grasses, a ball field, a deserted coast guard station, and then a cluster of newly constructed monstrosities jumbled together with summer cottages that had been winterized and looked as if they were about to topple over under the weight of their renovations. For several years now, Nahant had been plagued by mysterious, unseasonable storms, related, almost certainly, to global climate change. There was always footage on the local news of the National Guard fishing people out of these expensive residential mistakes. The sky-high insurance rates on the island and the thrill of natural disaster had increased real estate prices over the past decade or so, and now houses here went for more than they did in the city. The boom was helped by Nahant’s reputation for being a safe place to raise children, never mind the fact that the entire landmass was nearly swept out to sea by storms at least twice a year.

  We followed the main road around the coast until we started to climb up out of the lowlands to higher, rockier ground. The houses were older, grander, surrounded by wide lawns and gnarled trees.

  “I hope they live up here,” Edward said. “These people look as if they could afford to hire decent caterers.”

  Pampered and Expensive

  Edward read aloud from complicated directions that Charlotte had sent me, and soon we were pulling into their driveway. The sprawling shingled house wouldn’t have looked out of place in one of the nicer neighborhoods of a lesser Hampton. According to the book Samuel had given me, it had been built in the 1910s as a summer cottage. There was a history of storm damage and renovations, insulation projects and improvements, and as Samuel had said, it was barely recognizable from the photo in the book. Still, it exuded the charm of old money, of generations gathered under one roof for vacations, of long, dull dinners, and furtive pleasures in the darker corners of the garden.

  I parked under a pine tree on one side of the lawn, and we walked, as instructed, along a flagstone path that cut through a dense hedge of rhododendrons. The backyard sloped down from the house like a plush carpet to a rocky ledge that dropped into the ocean. It was dark now, but it was a clear, windy night, and shadows from the swaying trees and bushes encircling the yard were swimming on the moonlit lawn. Across the open water, the skyline of Boston was glittering like an expensive toy.

  “I’m impressed with your new crowd,” Edward said. “I’m a big advocate of making friends outside your class.”

  “It’s the lighting,” I said. “It makes everything look pampered and expensive. Even you, I might add. This new look of yours, with the dress shirts and the flannel pants, is very becoming.”

  “It’s emotional maturity, also known as the grim acceptance of the aging process.”

  A wide porch stretched across the entire back of the house. It was lined with chairs, like the deck of a ship, and some of them were rocking in the wind. A woman was standing against the railing, smoking, her arms wrapped around her chest. I’d developed sympathy for smokers, whose once-glamorous addiction had turned them into social pariahs almost overnight. You saw them huddled in doorways outside of office buildings, restaurants, bars, trying to look dignified, their cigarette-ad gestures graceful anachronisms.

  “In exile?” I asked.

  The wind blew her thick, dark hair into her face, another indignity, and she reached up to disentangle it from her nose and clear it out of her eyes, the cigarette an impediment.

  “I’m…afraid so,” she finally got out. She laughed nervously, a dry ha ha ha that sounded close to a wheeze. “Pretty picture, isn’t it? Woman in a gale, joylessly trying to get some nicotine into her system. Ha ha. The smoke isn’t bothering you, is it?” Given the wind, it was a silly question, but she was attractive enough to get away with it without sounding obsequious. She lifted one foot and ground out the cigarette against the sole of her shoe. “I shouldn’t be doing it anyway. I set rules for myself—no smoking at parties—and then I can’t stick to even the tiniest ones.” She looked around for a place to toss the butt, and finding none, dropped it over the railing. “Don’t tell anyone. Friends of him, or her?”

  “I’ve never met either of them,” Edward said. “William is their real estate agent, which doesn’t exactly explain why we’re here.”

  “Oh, that’s you. I’ve heard all about you. And the new place. I work with Sam. In the accounting department, I’m sorry to say.” She frowned and shrugged.

  She was standing with her arms folded protectively across her chest, and even though she was being self-deprecating about her work, she gave off the casual confidence you often find in people who know they’re beautiful. She looked young, which is to say younger than me, probably by close to a decade. There was something remotely familiar about her; then I realized I’d seen her picture on the Web site for Beacon Hill Solutions, wearing a lot of makeup, with her hair pulled back severely. She was prettier in person, but in a more wholesome, athletic way. She was probably very good at soccer and volleyball.

  “I think we’re arriving late,” I said. “How’s the party?”

  “People I mostly don’t know talking about other people I don’t know. I shouldn’t have come, but I wanted to see the house. I don’t belong here.”

  “Neither do we,” I said. “And I’m guessing you know more people here than we do.”

  She took a cigarette out of a pack of Marlboros and passed me the box. “Could you toss these out for me? I don’t have the heart to do it. One more and then I’ll meander back inside and try to find you. We’ll be the misfits, all huddled together.”

  Entering the house meant letting in a blast of ocean air, sending curtains billowing and causing an unfortunate number of people to look in our direction. A dozen or so guests turned toward Edward and me, gave a boozy who-the-hell-are-you glance, and then, apparently deciding that we were insignificant supporting players in their lives, quickly turned away.

  “Oh, God,” Edward said. “Why am I here? Why did I let you talk me into coming? Why are you here?”

  “Relax. We can pay our respects, have something to drink, and then slip out.”

  Not that I was eager to admit it to him, but he had a valid point. There were, undoubtedly, lots of lively, interesting, smart, and psychologically wounded people here, but I immediately felt as if Edward and I were creatures from another planet, imitating normalcy while trying unsuccessfully to hide the antennae sticking out of our heads.

  It was a long, wide room with a fireplace blazing in the center of one wall and an enormous number of windows that looked directly out to the ocean. The room smelled of the fire, and it was much too warm. This was one of those spectacular rooms that makes potential buyers swoon and ultimately ends up unused.

  We maneuvered through the crowd to a deserted alcove with bookcases and a little furniture vignette that comprised an overstuffed chair and a reading lamp. Another lovely, lifeless spot. I reached for a bowl of peanuts on a round table, but Edward moved it to a bookshelf behind him. “I don’t want to have to listen to your regrets about having gorged on these all the way home. You have to keep yourself fit for Alberto.”

  “I knew I shouldn’t have told you about all that.”
/>   “Don’t worry,” he said. “We both know there’s a lot about all that you didn’t tell me.”

  Ten minutes later, when it was approaching time to leave our safe haven and hunt down the hosts, a tall, dark-haired young man lumbered into our corner. He stuck out his hand like a gracious CEO greeting a few of his lesser employees. “Hi guys,” he said. “How’s it going? I’m Daniel. You probably must be friends of my parents.”

  I introduced the two of us and told him I’d helped his parents find their apartment in the city.

  “Right, right,” he said. He was scanning the room, as if he’d already lost interest in us and was hunting for more promising grazing grounds. “They’re all excited about that. Or Charlotte is anyway. Hey, whatever keeps them happy, right?”

  Clearly, he considered himself beyond this; he’d moved on in his own life and was trying to be supportive of their irrelevant, geriatric venture. He had his father’s lanky athleticism and long face, but Samuel’s striking good looks had been diluted in this younger edition. Daniel’s eyes lacked depth, like one of those handsome actors who can’t convincingly portray intellectual acuity. I couldn’t see anything of Charlotte in his appearance. How lonely she must have felt, isolated out here with her twin boys.

  “I thought you were off at college,” I said.

  “Yeah, well, I had a long weekend, and some friends were driving to Boston. My girlfriend’s still in high school down here, so the whole trip seemed like a great idea. Plus I got to please the parents.”

  “I’ve forgotten where you’re going to school.”

  He warmed to this safe, reliable topic, and mentioned a mid-sized school in northern Vermont named after a saint, another of those Catholic colleges known for heavy drinking and clandestine promiscuity.

  “I’ve heard it’s hard to get in there, these days,” I said. I hadn’t. As long as you’re mildly complimentary, you can get away with saying anything.

  “Yeah, it’s got an excellent reputation. Being half an hour from great skiing and all.”

  This explanation was uttered without irony. Most decisions about colleges seemed to lean heavily on the quality of the health club facilities or the ease of getting into a junior-year-in-Australia program. I wasn’t in a strong position to argue for intellectual rigor, but the current attitude toward education confused me. All of my peers invested vast amounts of time and money in educating their offspring, but if one of their kids got a bad grade on a paper or was criticized by a teacher for disrupting a class or not doing the required assignment, they rushed to school to throw their twenty-grand-a-year weight around. Children were being raised to believe that everything they said and did and thought was interesting and valuable, but since learning is essentially an admission that there’s something you don’t yet know, most were stuck with the misconceptions and faulty information they’d picked up at age five.

  Edward was staring at Daniel with a mixture of admiration and envy, undoubtedly trying to tamp down his resentment that Daniel’s young life was so much more blessed than his own had been. Edward had had one of those happy, cheerful childhoods that turned ugly and psychologically violent overnight. It was impressive that he’d survived it with so much dignity and so few outward signs of damage. What was most incredible to me was that he’d forgiven his parents enough to fly into Cincinnati monthly to tend to them and even pay a few of their bills. His parents held Edward—representative of moral decay and godlessness—personally responsible for the events of September 11. I was fascinated by the ways in which people who claimed to be religious blamed homosexuality and abortion and oral sex for the terrorist attacks when it was so blatantly apparent that one of the main causes had been religion.

  “Don’t let us keep you,” I said. “There must be a lot of people who want to talk with you.”

  “Not really.” He shoved his hands into the pockets of his baggy khakis and began rattling loose change. “I’ve known almost everyone here my whole life. We don’t have anything new to say to each other.”

  “Like me and William,” Edward said.

  “You’ve been together a long time?”

  He tossed this question off so casually, and with such automatic acceptance, I was ashamed of myself for having passed any harsh judgments on him. Neither Edward nor I said anything, each waiting for the other to utter the disavowal. A lot of people assumed we were a couple, and as long as we weren’t one, the assumption pleased me, especially there in that roomful of strangers.

  We were saved from further conversation by the approach of a small round woman with the mottled complexion of a drinker. She put her arm around Daniel’s waist and leaned against him in a way that was probably intended to be maternal, but looked lascivious. The top of her curly head came up to Daniel’s armpit. “I can’t believe you’re in college already,” she cooed. “I remember when you were running across the lawn in your diapers. And now you’re taller than me and Ned put together. With a stomach like a drum.” She tapped it, making a hollow sound, and then lifted up his jersey to reveal a taut abdomen split by a thin line of hair.

  I was amazed by the lewd way women flirt with their friends’ teenaged sons and the equally lewd way teenaged girls flirt with male friends of their parents. Probably I was annoyed that they could get away with behavior that, had it come from me, would have resulted in an arrest warrant.

  “I haven’t seen a stomach like that in twenty years.” She dropped the jersey down over Exhibit A and turned her attention to Edward and me. “Are you the antique dealers?”

  A gay couple that had recently opened up a shop somewhere in town? “No,” I said. “We’re the other ones.”

  “Oh? Do I know about you?”

  I explained about the apartment in Cambridge.

  “Charlotte’s been talking about that for years,” she said. “She’s always been restless. Me, I’m content to sit home and get fat. It’s funny she wants to get out now, now that everyone else is trying to find a place out here where it’s safe. There’s nothing more important than safety these days.” She patted Daniel’s stomach again. “I hope this finally makes her happy.”

  When she’d dragged Daniel to the other side of the room, Edward took a handful of peanuts and said, “I’ll bet you anything that kid is hung like a horse.”

  “An irrelevant wager since neither one of us will ever know.”

  I was convinced that Edward liked well-endowed men partly because he felt intellectually superior to someone with the genitalia of a farm animal.

  “Let’s go find the hosts,” I said. “Then we can sneak out.”

  “You go ahead. I’m going to get a huge gin and tonic.”

  “You don’t drink,” I reminded him.

  “I’m feeling reckless. It’ll help me get across the bridge on the way home.”

  The Major Leagues

  Left to my own devices, I tried to do what I usually do at parties, scan the crowd and divide it into three neat groups: My League, Out of My League, and A League of Their Own. Into the first group I ordinarily dump anyone with a bad haircut, the slumped posture of self-doubt, and an inappropriately loud laugh. Out of My Leaguers include all women over five ten and any man with a barbed-wire tattoo encircling his biceps. The folks in A League of Their Own are the ones talking to themselves while examining the cheese selection or drinking anything other than beer directly out of a bottle.

  This group was hard to read. They were a reasonably ordinary looking bunch of exclusively heterosexual couples who were probably more than ordinarily successful. Mixed in were a few of the disheveled, sun-weathered types in corduroy you often see in seaside communities, artists or drunks with money and sailboats. Older crowd, I thought, before realizing that few were older than me. My League, for the most part, but the smell of money in the air—not vast sums, but significant amounts spent with competitive vigor—bumped them Out of My League entirely. No one, I was distressed to note, was behaving inappropriately enough to be a likely candidate for A League
of Their Own, but the night was young.

  There was no sign of Charlotte or Samuel. The door to the porch banged open too loudly, and the windblown woman who’d been smoking entered. I watched her make her way across the room, with a graceful, self-conscious gait, like a teenager who knows or expects that she’s being observed at every moment. Another misfit maybe, but it seemed unlikely that she, like me, was wearing secondhand clothes.

  How Embarrassing

  Charlotte was in the kitchen, seated on a stool at a counter, talking or listening to a man who was propped up against the sink. The man’s face looked as if it had been pumped up with air. “Because she doesn’t know me,” he was saying. “You think she knows me, but she doesn’t have a clue.”

  “I don’t think she knows you,” Charlotte said. Her voice was weary and flirtatious. “I don’t have any opinion on the matter. For Christ’s sake, Richard, she’s your wife. Of course she doesn’t know you. Count your blessings.”

  The man, who’d latched on to this theme with what was clearly drunken tenacity, kept at it. “She doesn’t know me, that’s what I’m trying to tell you.”

  “Well, I don’t really know you either. Maybe, this is just a thought, you don’t know yourself.”

  “Ah, cruel,” he said. He turned to me. “She’s cruel, this woman.”

  “I was afraid you weren’t coming,” Charlotte told me. “I’ve been counting on you to rescue me from Richard. I once made the mistake of encouraging him.”

  “Once,” he said. “It’s been a very long once.” He went to her and touched her neck tenderly, but without any heat. “Too bad we’re such good neighbors.”

  When Richard had made a drunken, cheerful departure, Charlotte sat up on her stool a little straighter and gazed at me with a look of melancholy bemusement. “Why is it that the sloppy attention of someone you find overbearing, unattractive, and ridiculous can make you feel better about yourself than the devotion of your unnervingly handsome husband? Rhetorical question. Even your attention makes me feel better, William. Your chivalrous intervention on my behalf at the restaurant. Making sure Samuel put in the offer.”