Love Monkey

by Kyle Smith

  Shooter say: Don’t ev er let her catch you caring.

  “You’re going to regret this,” she says, “when I’m sitting on your couch every night crying for a week.”

  “My couch,” I say, “is Scotchgarded.”

  And I’m holding her. I’m stroking her hair. And I pull her down so she’s half-reclining in my lap. Her head is nestled in the crook of my arm and her eyes are closed and I’m looking at her soft cheek thinking, This girl is ridiculously beautiful.

  But she only does the nestling thing for a couple of minutes. And then she pops back up.

  “I’ve always had a boyfriend,” she says. “Since I was fifteen. I don’t know what to do without one.”

  Does that mean I’m not her next boyfriend?

  “Do you ever wish,” she says, not looking at me, “that we could skip over this part?”

  I just wait for her to finish.

  “I mean,” she says, “skip to however it ends up.”

  We watch the darkness crawl in. A firefly wanders into the wine bottle. I cork it back up and we watch the bug turning on and off. We can hear crickets. They sound like Dylan to me.

  Flowers on the hillside bloomin’ crazy

  Crickets talking back and forth in rhyme

  Blue river running slow and lazy

  I could stay with you forever and never realize the time.

  She picks up the wine bottle. Takes out the cork. But the firefly won’t leave.

  “Come on,” she says gently. Tapping on the bottom.

  “It’s just a bug,” I point out.

  “No,” she says, tapping. It takes a while to get the firefly out.

  “Yay,” she says, as the firefly darts away drunkenly.

  She wouldn’t hurt a firefly. Full-grown adult human males are another story. Us she stomps on.

  Tuesday, July 31

  Back from lunch. Got the sweaty gym bag, the red face from the workout, and the sandwich (sad salad on stale bread) growing bacteria in its sad sack. Check the phone messages.

  “Hey, it’s me.”

  A sigh oozes out of me like a slow leak. Her voice. Her soothing radio-talk-show-host voice. Her talk-a-jumper-off-the-Brooklyn-Bridge voice. Her impotence-happens-to-everyone voice. Suddenly I’m relaxed.

  “I was just wondering if we’re still going to this party thingy tonight.”

  I have refrained from badgering her. I invited her to this party a couple of weeks ago, and I mentioned it to her again last week. She has a habit of canceling things at the last minute, but tonight I figure I have a little ace in the hole. How many girls get invited to parties with the president?

  Well, not the. A. Clinton. He’s going to be at this party at the apartment of one of these toothless literary lions who haunt the Upper East Side. Apparently, one of Clinton’s aides got him to contribute a chapter to a book about famous people and their childhood memories about sports.

  I call her later at home and we arrange to meet down the block from the party. She’s across East End Avenue when I clock her: she’s changed out of the khakis she wore to work today. Now she’s in a shimmery salmon summer dress. She looks ultrafeminine, a Super Bowl commercial for beauty. At work I can boss her around. She’s a copygirl; everyone is her boss. But when it comes to sexual authority, she’s General Patton. In complete command—ten hut!—of my privates.

  She’s pacing around, looking at the sidewalk, having a cigarette. She’s a little nervous. She always is. I find this a little irresistible.

  I’m stuck across the avenue waiting for the light to change. So I pull my camera out of my bag and hold down the telephoto lever and I snap a couple of pictures. She smiles.

  Across the street, I don’t go for the big kiss. There’s a little kiss, a little hug. And off we go.

  I give my name to the PR bunny at the door, and she checks me off her list. But there are no metal detectors. There are no hired mugs or Secret Service gorillas either, and no one asks to check my bag. Obviously the president is not here. And I have let Julia down once again.

  We go upstairs, where the women have faces stretched like the Joker’s and the men wear rep ties and talk about what prep schools their grandsons are going for. There are a few people our age but not many, and I don’t know any of them. So we find a couple of plush chairs by the window and slowly start to drain the bar of its wine supply.

  The apartment looks like the kind of place where capital-I Intellectuals meet to swap hot gossip about the 1952 presidential campaign. Obesely overstuffed chairs, books on the shelves whose dust jackets have gone crispy with age. Fat Persian carpets. You could land a helicopter in the book-lined living room, and then there’s the book-lined study and the book-lined bedrooms, and…wait a minute, I didn’t even see a bedroom. Maybe the bedrooms are on a different floor entirely. This place is a mansion. How can you not be an accomplished writer, living in these digs? The brandy and quips probably came with the lease.

  We make fun of the various “characters.” A gossip girl from the Daily News’s Rush and Molloy column working the whole Holly Golightly thing, complete with elbow gloves. Liz Smith and Cindy Adams, each making sure everyone is noticing how she takes no notice of the other. There’s our “downtown” writer, a dandy in a cream-colored three-piece linen suit with matching fedora and, possibly, spats: in other words, he’s a typical Bennington graduate. In the corner is the swashbuckling, grenade-lobbing Elvis of gossips, Richard Johnson. The guy’s about six-four, better looking than the people he covers. He stands as still as a maypole as publicists and sycophants do their little dance of fear around him. Occasionally he laughs his evil laugh.

  While I’m at the bar I look out to the foyer and see a familiar face.

  Coming back to our chairs, I figure not many guys ever get a chance to hit a girl with a line like this.

  “The president,” I say, “is here.”

  He’s trying to move through the crowd but to them he’s Moses in a light brown suit, canary shirt, not-cheap tie. He’s heading down the three steps to the sunken living room, at the moment of peak attendance.

  Julia is acting all shy. “Come on,” I say. “This may be your only chance to meet him.”

  The crowd is pressing in on all sides, but I’m pressing harder, pulling Julia toward him. She’s in handshake range and reaches out to touch his beefy paw. I’m snapping pictures wildly but people are jostling me from every angle. I need to back up to get them both in the frame but there’s no room. So I take wild-ass shots, trying to get Julia in the foreground while the big He surfs on the adulation. He takes her hand, looks her in the eye, looks her in the body. I’m flattered at first, but then I remember his taste in women.

  Eventually we return to our original position, backed up to the far corner.

  Clinton begins to speak, tells us this long boring story about how the guy who edited the book was one of the first volunteers on his campaign staff back in ’92. And he’s off telling us how it was back in those early days, back before he became the pope of politics, back when there were only 100 phones and a few million bucks in the bank and the interns were nerdy Jewish guys instead of needy Jewish women and on and on it goes and I’m not really listening because I have decided to put my hand on Julia’s ass.

  I start with the small of her back, all civilized like, but three glasses of wine and a stance within groping distance of the most beautiful girl in the world can play tricks with a man’s judgment and my hand takes all of three seconds to work its way down to her left rump.

  I’m teasing, not squeezing, just running my nails over the cool curve. And I discover two very nice things:

  Julia is wearing a thong.

  Julia is enjoying having her ass stroked in front of the forty-second President of the United States.

  She’s leaning into me and Clinton is regaling the crowd, so I just keep regaling her ass. She puts her head on my shoulder and moves in close. Nice. God, her ass is so sweet and round and perfect and I will never stop stroking
it. Until this moment, I never thought I was much of an ass man. (What’s the big deal? I’ve got one of those.) Now I just want her ass for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

  Clinton wraps up and the crowd starts to follow him out the door.

  “Time for the next adventure?” I say.

  “Mmm-hmm,” she says, and it’s a yummy sound. A stroke-me sound.

  “So,” I say, whispering conspiratorially, “how do you like being molested in front of major heads of state?”

  And she laughs.

  We stroll lazily uptown looking for a place to eat. Turning on East Eighty-fourth, I notice it’s a quiet block. It’s a pleasing night. And I’m as horny as Rosie O’Donnell at a WNBA game.

  “Look at this,” I say rakishly. “A doorway. Let’s go check it out.”

  The doorway is down some steps, five feet below street level, and marked REFUSE STORAGE AND PICKUP in a big red triangle. The bottom step is cement. The door is metal and locked. There is no garbage around.

  I skip down the stairs and toss my backpack on the ground. She stands on the top step warily, hovering. Waiting to be talked into something, like Eve.

  And then she’s down the stairs and she’s in my arms and I’m all over her. Pawing her waist, rubbing her back, drinking her lips, squeezing her ass, hickeying her neck. I want to publish my lust right there above her collarbone.

  And my mind is exploring options.

  I’ve got one hand under the hem of her dress, my nails on the soft valley behind her knee. She flinches a little but I’m already well on my way to the destination, determined to make her do some arriving of her own.

  She starts to turn around but I hold her tight with my left arm.

  “Don’t worry,” I whisper in her ear as my right hand goes to work. “No one’s there. People walk by and they keep walking.”

  A few people have strolled by already. They glance quickly, but then they look away.

  “Nobody can see anything,” I whisper. “Your dress is hanging down in back.”

  I’m working. And playing. Touching, circling, teasing.

  Her eyes are closed. All of her body weight is leaning on me.

  She still hasn’t let go of her shoulder bag.

  “No one’s going to make off with this, I promise,” I say, and take it and put it on the ground next to us.

  And I’m back to work.

  Hello, upper thigh.

  “Does it feel nice?” I say.

  And in slow motion, with her eyes closed, she nods and nods again.

  Hello, thong.

  “We could meet on the West Side sometime…,” she whispers.

  My neighborhood. That sounds like an invitation. You could hang wet laundry on my schlong. I could do push-ups with no hands.

  And I’m bringing her along.

  And then I bring her right on home.

  Her mouth is all over mine in gratitude. I want every cell of her. There isn’t any part of her I don’t want in my mouth. The voluptuousness of her kneecaps. The lubricity of her toenails. And I pull her away for a second to get a look at her face: it’s a bog of sweat. Her hair is hanging down as if she’s just gotten out of a hot shower.

  Then we’re back at it.

  And I’m panting, “I have to see your thong.”

  Then I’m on my knees, a supplicant to love, worshiping at the church of Our Lady of the Holy Fucking Hot Thong.

  “I have others,” she whispers.

  It’s red.

  Saturday, August 4

  I’m at Shooter’s house in the Hamptons, sitting by the pool in my swimsuit with a book I am not reading and a drink I am not drinking. She’s at the Jersey Shore. With her mother, her father, her brothers, and her boyfriend. You just know they’re playing Frisbee. As punishment for this treachery, I am not calling her. I have this week obtained a cell phone, my first ever, for the specific purpose of not calling her. Of course, she might want to call me.

  The hunt is continuing but she always dances just out of range. I’m the chaser and she’s the chaste. We go to parties together. We drink our drinks together. Complain about our jobs together. We drink, we whine. We drink, we whine. Blather, rinse, repeat. We go to movies. We go to dinners. They all end the same way. Every evening is a seminar in cruelty. Not an exercise in frustration: an entire workout. She’s like a personal trainer, except one of them would cost me only $50 an hour.

  At the end of every evening, we share the cab. We run our lines together, in our taxi theater: “Come up.” “I can’t.” I worship her from anear.

  I woo her with food. I woo her with booze. I woo her with goo-goo eyes and stolen kisses. (Stolen? I paid for these kisses, bub. Oh, how I paid.) I woo her in the park and I woo her in the dark. I woo her until my woo-woo is worn and then what do I do? I woo her some more. She is woo-proof. She is unwooable. Woe is my wooer.

  Back at the pool, Alpha Dog emerges first, at 12:15. As usual he goes straight for my balls.

  “Hey, Alfie, how ya—ow, don’t stand on my testicles, boy. Yes, I love you too.” My face is covered in dog spit, but who am I to spurn unconditional love? Alpha’s tail is operating at a thousand wags a minute. If he could figure out the angles, he could probably use it to rise vertically, like a helicopter. Then maybe he could fly around the neighborhood and discover there are lots of other guys’ balls he could be stomping on.

  “Heh, heh, heh,” says Shooter, coming down to the side of the pool and sticking a foot in the water. He’s working on a large Bloody Mary, possibly not his first of the day. What a degenerate. Which reminds me. I reach down and take a gulp of mine. Ahh. How could I have forgotten? When I find myself in times of trouble, Bloody Mary comes to me.

  Shooter sits down, his feet in the water up to the knees, and pats Alpha’s rump. “Get a room, you two.”

  “Pardon my screams,” I say. “I just wasn’t in the mood for a savage nut crunching on this particular day.”

  “You don’t use ’em much anyway. Consider it exercise. Are you thinking about that girl again?” Shooter asks.

  “You caught the dreamy look in my eye?”

  “Yeah, that,” he says, taking a sip. “Plus the huge boner.”

  Oh.

  “Unless it’s for Alpha, you sick fuck,” Shooter adds pleasantly. He chuckles into his drink.

  “I need help. This girl, she’s everywhere,” I say. “She’s oozing through every cell of me. She’s got a hold on every sector of my body.”

  “Can’t help you there, sport. I’m a lover, not an oncologist.”

  “This girl is harder to get into than Rao’s.”

  “Listen,” Shooter says. “What did the wise old brain surgeon say to the rookie brain surgeon?”

  “I don’t know,” I say.

  “ ‘Relax. This isn’t rocket science.’ ”

  “I know it isn’t rocket science. Rocket science makes sense. Earth’s gravitional field doesn’t pull things in on Tuesday and push them away on Sunday.”

  “Been having a lot of Sundays?”

  “Hola,” someone says.

  Another Bloody Mary enters the yard, followed closely by Mike. Last winter he and Karin bought the house next door to Shooter’s in Amagansett. Mike’s house features a screaming infant and basic cable. Shooter’s has a pool and seventeen movie channels. I spend more time at Shooter’s.

  “Hey,” I say.

  “How’s the water?” he says. Mike’s also carrying a magazine and a boom box. He puts the radio down and plugs it in. It’s tuned to the FM station for people who iron their jeans.

  “Up to standard,” Shooter says.

  Mike takes his Wine Spectator and gets on a float. He paddles his way around the pool as he reads, the magazine propped on his belly.

  The radio: the most overplayed song since that annoying Sheryl Crow tune about the guy peeling the labels off his bottle of Bud.

  Now she’s back in the atmosphere,

  With drops of Jupiter in her hair, hey, hey,

&n
bsp; She acts like summer and walks like rain,

  Reminds me that there’s time to change, hey, hey.

  “I love this song,” Mike says.

  “You don’t, really,” says Shooter.

  “What’s it called?” Mike says.

  “ ‘Drops of Jupiter.’ By Train.”

  “I’m gonna get the CD,” Mike threatens.

  “That’s a little extreme,” Shooter says.

  “Please don’t,” I say. The next thing you know, he’ll be falling for that song that sounds like Superman talking to his shrink.

  “Why?” Mike says.

  “There’s nothing to it,” I say. “It’s a string of nonsense—‘since the return of her stay on the moon, she listens like spring and she talks like June’?—what’s that? It’s just killing time till you get to the chorus.”

  “Love that chorus!” he says. And here it comes.

  Na na na na na

  Na na na na na na na-aah-a-aah!

  We listen.

  “What’s that line?” Shooter says.

  “ ‘Man, heaven is overrated’?” Mike says.

  “No,” I say. “I think it’s, ‘Manhattan is overrated.’ Don’t you get it? It’s an anti-New York song.” Sometimes people don’t get New York. The place is dirty and dangerous and crowded and costly, and every other place is even worse.

  “Do you want to come over for a movie tonight?” Mike says.

  My mistake: I agree. So hours later Shooter and I sit down with Mike and Karin for some nice TV. The baby, having been “put down” (apparently this doesn’t mean given a lethal injection, just as animals who are “put to sleep” won’t be needing a wake-up call), isn’t available for an in-person performance, so we watch a video of the baby.

  In the video, the baby is getting a bath. That’s it. This isn’t any special bath; it isn’t My First Bath or My First Shampoo or My First Breaststroke or anything; it’s just A Bath. For fifteen minutes. Mike sits on an ottoman about six inches away from the TV, almost directly in my line of sight, peering at the footage as intently as Stanley Kubrick in his editing room. I consider telling him he’s blocking my sight, but then again, what am I missing?