The Unknowns

by Gabriel Roth

  “You know what we should do?” I tell her. “We should take our shoes off.”

  “My shoes aren’t bothering me at all,” she says.

  “And yet once you take them off you will be astonished at how much comfort is available simply by removing your shoes.” I am sitting on the bed, hungrily removing my shoes.

  She is playing. “What if I’m more comfortable with my shoes on?”

  “I suppose there is the remote possibility that you are more comfortable with your shoes on,” I say, “although I don’t believe it for a second. But I seem to have acquired some kind of neurotic fixation on you experiencing the state of shoelessness right now, and so it wouldn’t be inaccurate to say that your shoes are making me uncomfortable.”

  “What a terrible situation!” she says, and for a moment it looks as if she really does think it’s a terrible situation. “Incompatible desires! What should we do?”

  “I will propose a solution,” I tell her. “It requires that you do me a small favor. You remove your shoes—no, you don’t even have to put in the legwork—legwork, ha! Anyway: I will remove your shoes for you. You will spend thirty seconds assessing the resultant sensation. If at the end of that trial period you wish to return to your previous shoe-clad state, I will gently replace the shoes, and my mind will rest easy in the knowledge that you are enjoying your personal optimum comfort state as regards footwear. If, on the other hand, you decide that you prefer to go without shoes, I will do a little dance of vindication.”

  “That could work,” she says, sitting down next to me on the bed.

  “This way, neither of us will have to sacrifice comfort, physical or psychogenic, for more than an instant.”

  “That’s a great plan,” she says.

  I get up off the bed (just standing is extremely enjoyable, and I sit back down and stand up again so I can experience it for a second time) and crouch at her feet. She’s wearing some kind of black dress shoe. I cradle her foot by the ankle, fiddle with the buckle, slip the shoe off. I repeat the process with the other shoe. I place the shoes carefully next to the bed, side by side, then stand up.

  “Oh wow,” she says. “That’s really comfortable.”

  Lauren reclines, moving all of her limbs at once as if swimming through some viscous medium. Something is happening. She opens her eyes and sees me smiling down at her and she smiles back. She looks lovely. I lie down next to her and start stroking her neck. It’s awesome to be stroking her neck. I’m seeing her hair with a kind of hyperclarity that reminds me of something I can’t place. I look at her face, and suddenly the Ecstasy is doing what we pay it to do. We kiss for a while, gently, like deer. The part of my brain that compares whatever’s going on in real life to whatever might simultaneously be going on in some parallel universe has shut up. And now we’re naked, and there’s these breasts right in front of me, these things that have no purpose but human comfort, and the skin of her neck is so soft, and her pubic hair grazes my leg. Thanks to the Ecstasy my penis is resolutely flaccid, but I know she understands this. She gives it a tender look, as though it’s her newborn baby. It feels like we’re both bouncing now, like we’re moving up and down in giant arcs, like we’re floating in space. We lie there awhile.

  “God, it’s been such a long time since I’ve felt close to anyone,” she says.

  “I know,” I say. “I’m so glad you were up for this.”

  “I almost didn’t, you know. I was like, Who is this guy, I’ve never met him, Justin hardly knows him, I shouldn’t go and do drugs with him.”

  “You were just being sensible.”

  “I was being scared. I go around being scared all the time. I’m usually scared to be naked with boys.”

  “Everybody is.”

  “Really?” She seems surprised by this, as though it’s never occurred to her before.

  “Absolutely. Everybody is.” This seems true as I say it. “We spend all this energy hiding ourselves, and then when we’re having sex or whatever, we’re supposed to be naked with each other, but we get so scared, and then we’re more wrapped up and guarded and closed off than ever.”

  “I’m so scared that I make it like I’m not even there at all,” she says. “I just remove myself, mentally. But that’s what sex should be about. It’s about being close to each other.” She’s running her fingers through my hair.

  “It’s not about having an orgasm,” I say.

  “Orgasms are nice, though.”

  “They certainly are. But it’s—do you want to have an orgasm right now?”

  “No.” She’s beaming.

  “Can I tell you something about having orgasms?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’ve never told anyone this in my entire life.” It’s true. I haven’t. Why not?

  “Tell me.” She nods rhythmically. She really wants to know.

  “Every time I have an orgasm with another person, every time, it doesn’t matter who she is, right before I come I hear these words in my head.”

  “What are the words?”

  “I love you, Mom. Every time, just like that. I love you, Mom.”

  She looks like she’s just been given a Christmas present. “Really?”

  “I spend my whole life being ashamed of that.”

  “There’s no reason to be ashamed!”

  “I know! I know!”

  “Because it’s a good thing in you! It’s a good feeling!”

  “It’s love!” I tell her, and I’ve figured it out for the first time. “It’s just love! It’s all the same thing!” And I get up and start dancing, naked, while she stares at me, her pupils wide as saucers.

  Four hours later the tide is going out. I’m pacing the room and starting to narrate.

  “So I’m getting a little cold, so I’m going to put on my T-shirt and my boxers now, if that’s all right with you. Wait, where did they… oh, here’s my T-shirt, it got lost under the comforter. And I’ll bet—yup, here’s the boxers, right next to it. There we go. You know, until I was about twenty I bought all my T-shirts in extra-large because on some unconscious level I think I thought I was going to grow into them.”

  “God,” she says, “my stomach really hurts.”

  “That sucks. Do you have any Pepto-Bismol? I don’t really get stomachaches. There’s stomach people and head people, apparently, and I’m a head person. I feel stuff in my head. Maybe I should put my pants on too. I feel weird walking around your apartment in my underwear.”

  We spend another hour waiting out the symptoms—her stomach, my jaw, my monologue—and then I make well-I-should-get-going noises, patting my pockets for my keys and wallet and phone. We hug goodbye at the door, a quick chest press, a take-care-of-yourself hug. Neither of us mentions seeing each other again.

  It’s just after dawn and everything looks weirdly bleached out, as if the color saturation hasn’t caught up to the brightness. I have chemical energy to burn off, so I start walking home through the unfamiliar neighborhood, past stuccoed seventies houses and Chinese seafood restaurants. I feel like shit but I’m glad to be alone, in a place I have no reason to be, at a time when I shouldn’t even be awake. The cold feels good, and I’ve got my coat. I shouldn’t have told her about the thing.

  I’m in no shape to think about this. I’m just going to walk off the rest of this buzz, go home, get some sleep. Tomorrow I’ll do the math, figure out what happened, what to do next.

  I shouldn’t have told her about the thing.

  I get home circa 6:40 a.m. and crawl into bed and put a mask over my eyes. The mask is made of soft foam lined with sateen, and its eyepieces bulge convexly to prevent eyelid contact, which can disturb REM. The mask usually helps me sleep, but this morning there is no sleeping because of the adrenaline racing up and down my spine. My friend Danny claims to have consumed pure MDMA, uncut with amphetamines, manufactured by a CU-Boulder chemistry Ph.D. If I’d taken that I’d be asleep now, although it wouldn’t have kept me from humiliating myself with a stra
nger. Responsibility for that error lies with the Ecstasy itself, which suppresses faculties of self-consciousness and shame that, although harsh at times, serve a vital regulatory function and shouldn’t be artificially disabled for the sake of some momentary intimacy with a girl who isn’t even the girl I was pursuing. Is Maya going to hear about what happened? Are Lauren and Maya on the phone together right now? By turning my head hard to the left and peering out through the narrow gap between the mask’s edge and the right side of my nose, I can see the bedside clock, according to which it’s only 7:33. They’re not on the phone. Lauren is lying in bed, trying to lower her heart rate by force of will, thinking about the weird guy she brought home who seemed sort of charming at first and gave her drugs and got her naked and then instead of fucking her took the opportunity to unburden himself of his infantile peccadillo.

  Lying here is bringing me no closer to sleep. I should get up, pass a few hours in vigorous exercise, flush the speed from my bloodstream, return to bed around ten, sleep through the day, wake up in the evening and get some breakfast and then stay on a nocturnal schedule, eating lunch at three in the morning, taking vitamin D supplements to substitute for sunlight, never seeing another human being except the clerks working the night shift at the twenty-four-hour Safeway, until one night I run into Maya in the cereal aisle—I’m holding Honey Bunches of Oats, she’s holding Special K—and the two of us leave the supermarket together and drive to the top of Twin Peaks to hold hands and watch the sunrise.

  Giving up, I remove the mask and emerge from the bedroom into my apartment’s vast living room/kitchen/dining area. The light through the casement windows is lurid and exhausting, and when I reach the couch I collapse on it and gaze out at the skyline. When I bought this place the view of downtown seemed a thrilling prospect, but four months later it looks like something off a postcard. I’m wearing the same underwear and T-shirt I had on last night, now sour-smelling and soft, and the couch’s coarse fabric is slightly rough against my bare legs. I’m aware that there’s something I’m trying to forget, and the awareness prompts me to investigate, and then I remember last night’s indiscretion and my brain winces and tries to vomit. I go to the fridge for a Gatorade, and keeping my balance requires more concentration than usual. I drink half the Gatorade standing by the fridge with the door open so the cool air prickles the hair on my legs. Is there a way to ensure that I never see Lauren again? She’s probably just as embarrassed as I am. Obviously she’s nowhere near as embarrassed as I am. She’s probably embarrassed, although not as embarrassed as I am, and wants to forget the whole thing. Or else: over the next few days our five-hour artificially instigated love affair will tug at the back of her mind, and she’ll decide the only way to scratch the itch is for the two of us to meet for coffee and review our feelings about the events in question and start erecting a mandatory friendship. She could get my email address pretty easily. I shut the refrigerator door and flip open my laptop, which is sitting on the granite surface of the kitchen island. Once it wakes up and finds the wireless connection I refresh my email, but of course there’s nothing from her, only an invitation to speak on a couple of panels at the Digital Future Conference in March. She won’t email today—she’ll give me a few days to contact her first. I set the email client to alert me when a new message arrives and wonder if there will be any girls at the Digital Future Conference. Where is Maya right now? It’s 8:12 on Saturday. She’s asleep in Justin’s bed, her head on his shoulder in the morning-after composition familiar from American cinema, a sheet draped over her to hide her nipples from the camera. I can’t remember the specifics of her face, just hair and glasses and an expression of compassionate skepticism. The newspapers are waiting downstairs, and the crossword would occupy me for half an hour. I put on the pants I wore last night and then ride barefoot down to the lobby in the nearly silent elevator. When I bought the apartment I decided I’d take the stairs every time, to build some exercise into my routine, but I’m always in a hurry or tired in a way that justifies taking the elevator, or else I’ve just done something noble and thus deserve to take the elevator as a reward. I am aware that these are excuses that prevent me from gaining the health benefits of taking the stairs, and I’ve started trying to tell myself I should take the stairs anyway, even when I’m feeling rushed or exhausted or virtuous, but this particular unslept serotonin-starved humiliated morning is clearly not the morning to abjure the elevator at last. The newspapers are just outside the building’s frosted-glass front door, the Times in its blue bag, the Chronicle in yellow. As I stoop to pick them up I wonder if Maya is sending me an email asking if I want to hang out sometime. I recognize the absurdity of this thought and try to dismiss it, but I nevertheless return to the elevator at a faster pace and am disappointed when the doors don’t open as soon as I press the call button. I shuffle from foot to foot on the cold painted concrete, waiting.

  Eventually the metal doors part and reveal the family from the third floor, a young couple with a two-year-old and an infant and a big Akita. I’m standing closer to the elevator doors than is customary, and I must look pretty bad. The mother flinches protectively toward the boy’s stroller.

  “Papers,” I say, displaying them, and try to smile reassuringly.

  When I get back to the apartment I drop the papers on the island and glance unstoppably at the laptop’s screen, where nothing has changed.

  In the bathroom I clean up, gargle, assess the situation. Looking in the mirror is always disappointing—it’s strange that something can be always disappointing; you’d imagine that eventually you’d adjust your expectations downward to the point where they’re congruent with reality—but today it’s even more disappointing than usual. My skin is ghastly pale, and my hair has flattened and swollen in random whorls and eddies. The real problem, though, is not these contingent features but the face itself. When we say someone has a big nose, we’re usually talking about the third dimension, the degree to which the nose protrudes into the outside world. My nose, in contrast, is big in the first two dimensions, the x- and y-coordinates. (This corresponds to greater negative space in the nostril area as well.) But my nose is just the most dramatic symptom of a deeper problem: there isn’t enough room on my face. When I was a boy my features could coexist in peace, but as I emerged from puberty they began to manifest expansionist aims and struck out into the neutral territory between them. I am surveying the battlefield when a chime sounds in the other room, and hope spikes into my heart, and I defer the brushing of my teeth and exit the bathroom to check my email.

  I haven’t spoken to my father since I left Denver more than three years ago, and I thought we were both committed to falling out of touch. But there it is: B_Muller@spencercollege.edu.

  Eric, Im going to be in San Fran next month. Thought we might get together if your free. Got something BIG to spring on you. I’ll be the the 7 to the 16, hope that’s good for you. Barry (dad).

  Sic passim. His signature takes up seven lines and lists his job title, employer, mailing address, and phone number, none of which has changed in a decade.

  I spend most of the following weeks surfing the Internet to no purpose. I wake in the early afternoons with no memory of any dreams. I compose a brief reply to my father, suggesting that he call me when he arrives. The program coordinator for the Digital Future Conference emails again, and this time I accept the invitation. In the evenings I rotate my three most reliable culinary options: the hamburger place, the burrito place, and spaghetti. Christmas and New Year’s occur without me.

  I’m not sure exactly how much time has passed since my last unwise attempt at social contact, but the number of days modulo three must equal two because I’m getting a burrito. The taqueria is painted in kindergarten shades of red and yellow, and the jukebox plays Mexican pop music at an excruciating volume, and the lighting makes everyone more animated than usual. I walk up the aisle toward the counter and there, at a table on the left, is Maya, and my heart is suddenly audible to the e
ntire restaurant. She’s listening intently to a pale, pierced girl who is talking loudly and gesturing with her hands. Does Maya see me? I lock my eyes on the far wall and walk past her, trying to maintain a natural pace and gait. The possibilities start branching: Either she saw me or she didn’t. If she saw me, did she see me see her? If she saw me see her, does she think I didn’t recognize her? Is it possible she doesn’t recognize me? And this: What does she know about me?

  The guy taking the orders calls me amigo, which he only started doing a month ago and which usually makes me feel good but not today.

  I’ve never been able to figure out how much girls tell each other. I used to assume that information is a status symbol in GirlWorld, and so anything you tell a girl will be displayed like a piece of jewelry. But I’ve come to think it works more like money, something to be judiciously invested for maximum returns. If I’m right, Maya doesn’t necessarily know about my, what, my Oedipal thing. Let’s say she doesn’t. Let’s say she thinks I’m just some guy she met at a party, and I sit down and eat a burrito with her and her friend. The next time Maya sees Lauren she says, Guess who I ran into at El Submarino the other night? and when Lauren hears this she smiles cryptically and says, Oh, what was that like? in a funny tone of voice that prompts Maya to start saying What? What? until, after demurring for a suitable interval, Lauren tells Maya what I told her about ejaculating and the voice in my head and I love you, Mom, and first shock and disgust ensue, and then eventually hilarity, and by the end of the conversation I have become an anecdote to them, a strange, sad boy-man they once met who disguises his creepy little perversion behind reflexive flirting, and just imagining that makes me want to kill myself.

  So while I wait for the line cook to assemble the burrito I stare fixedly at the refrigerators full of soda and beer. The sodas are imported from Mexico; they are made with cane sugar rather than corn syrup and bear stickers warning that they’re not to be sold in the U.S. Finally the cook calls out, “Forty-four, cuarenta y cuatro!” and I’m clutching my burrito and chips and heading for the door. And then there’s that business of pretending you haven’t seen the person without making it look like you’re ignoring her. It’s impossible to know how successful this deception ever is. You don’t know if she genuinely doesn’t know you’re there, or if she sees you but thinks you don’t see her and prefers not to announce herself, or if the two of you are collaborating on a little play in which you pretend not to notice each other. Accurate data is almost impossible to come by, and in its absence I have the feeling of flying blind into a whirlwind. Of course, I could just talk to her. Even if she knows. I could say hello and introduce myself to her friend and start talking to her and see what happens, and if she gives me a knowing look and says, I heard you and Lauren had quite a time the other week, I could smile and say, Yeah, we had a time. My eyes are fixed dead ahead and I’m standing too straight, in a way that feels unnatural and probably looks stupid. I could just sit down next to her. Instead I walk past her, through the door, out to the sidewalk, and think, I’ve made it.