The Pisces

by Melissa Broder

  I told him that I took an Uber, and I would take one back.

  “I’m going to get a car now. Maybe we can kiss until it gets here?”

  I got higher and higher off the kisses. I just needed more and more of them. I felt that if I stopped getting them I would not be okay, but while I was close to his face everything was humming. I might have been looking at him funny. Maybe too lovingly? Could he smell my strange attachment already? What the fuck was wrong with me?

  On the way home in the car, I kept checking my phone but he didn’t message me right away like Adam did. I kept turning my ringer off and on. Did I want to be notified? Did I not want to be notified or just be surprised? What if he never texted me again? When I got home, a pile of what looked like brown soft-serve ice cream was waiting for me on the kitchen tile. Dominic had shit on the floor.

  18.

  The following night, tired of waiting, I texted Garrett.

  I had fun last night

  I waited to hear back, carrying the phone with me from room to room. There was no response. I felt like Dominic’s pile of shit. Was he really going to ignore me? I had gotten a weird feeling after our kisses, that I had suffocated him or seemed too interested. I texted him again.

  Would you want to hang out again?

  And again:

  Hey, sorry if I seemed too eager or something.

  And again:

  Ok I’ll leave you alone now

  I went outside to the beach. I saw a girl bike by on the boardwalk. She had long hair to her ass and was wearing a tiny black skirt and a hot-pink crop top with her stomach showing. I thought to myself, You little slut. I didn’t think it in a mean way but as a celebratory thing. I wanted to be her in that moment. She seemed like such an independent slut. I bet she never waited for texts, just fucked guys like Garrett all the time, casually. Surfer boys who looked like Theo the swimmer too, probably. I bet she never got attached. I wanted to be like this girl, not dependent on anyone else to be okay. Slutty, but an island. She wasn’t pretending to be content without anyone while secretly wallowing in misery. She genuinely didn’t give a fuck.

  I walked over to the rocks to see if Theo was there, but he wasn’t: only the waves. It was still probably too early. I waited a few minutes and wondered if he was mad at me for talking about my dating life. Was he jealous? That couldn’t be possible. I wasn’t even sure if he liked me. Still, now I was being ignored by two men. This felt worse than only being ignored by one, like the hole in me had gotten bigger. Maybe the more men you put in it the more stretched it became. Maybe Claire had been wrong.

  But suddenly a text came through. It was Garrett.

  fuck you this Sunday?

  My heart jumped. It was brazen, not exactly romantic, but it was clear that he wanted me. I felt as though someone had suddenly injected me with good drugs. In an instant the world had gone from black and white to Technicolor again. I began walking back to the house, smiling.

  ok yeah

  good he wrote. have you heard of the Shalimar?

  YES, I wrote back.

  I had no idea what it was.

  Good. i’ve always wanted to fuck there. wear lingerie and I’ll fuck you in your sweet little pussy and asshole

  I’d never thought of my pussy as little. Maybe it was big. What if I had a huge pussy? Also, my asshole? I had never had anal and it seemed terrifying to me. I knew, through all of the butt songs the kids listened to on campus, that the ass was a big thing now. Apparently everyone was eating each other’s assholes and putting things in them. But then why did he want me to wear lingerie? It seemed kind of retro, not contemporary at all like anal. Now that I thought of it, though, anal sex was a timeless act. The Romans all fucked each other in the ass. I felt like I didn’t know anything. But also I was excited.

  what color I asked.

  It was like I had become a puppet. I just wanted to please him.

  Black bra black panties. and garters. meet me in the lobby at 1 pm

  All of my underwear was white and kind of threadbare. I had never been a sexy-lingerie kind of girl. It never went with my aesthetic. Also, I had a propensity for yeast infections. Whenever I wore anything other than cotton there were issues. So I called Claire.

  “I’m going to be having sex…at a hotel…he’s getting a room for the night…the graphic designer, not the chimpanzee one. He wants me to wear lingerie. Do you know where I should go to get something cute? Victoria’s Secret?”

  “Victoria’s Secret? You’re joking,” she laughed. “That’s faff. Let me take you somewhere good.”

  I skipped group and met her in Brentwood at a place called La Boom Boom. Immediately I could tell it was way out of my price range: a hybrid of Mercedes-keyed tight-bodied moms in yoga pants and potential porn stars. You couldn’t tell who were the moms and who were the porn stars, but they all definitely had money. Who were these women buying lingerie in the middle of the day? I guess this was what everyone did in L.A. The place reminded me of being inside a black-and-pink birthday present. The walls were pink with black velvet stripes and there were little pink chocolates on a table. I ate some.

  “Come on,” said Claire. “Don’t be scared.”

  “How much do you think this stuff is?”

  “Just go in there,” said Claire, pointing to one of the little pink changing rooms. “I’ll bring you stuff. What size are you?”

  “I’m a 32 B on the top last time I checked,” I said. “But barely. I have no idea what I am on the bottom.”

  I tried on bra after bra, various panties with little slips of paper in each of them to keep them fresh for whoever bought them. I imagined other women’s vaginal juices on the paper. It nauseated me a little but also made me feel like I was part of some kind of ritual, a lineage, like Sappho’s all-female cult of Aphrodite. Claire and the saleswoman were the priestesses. They made it a party. The saleswoman was named Bridget and was a GMILF, a hot grandma type. They cooed over me, telling me I had a nice ass, cute little breasts, that I looked great in everything. Claire even slapped me on the ass. I liked the way they encouraged me, babied me even. With my mother dead, and Annika away at college, I’d never had that type of tactile feminine love as a teen. I’d pretended I didn’t need or want it. I told myself that I was lucky. As a single parent, my father wasn’t home much and I was free. I had zero curfew, no rules. But my longing leaked out in other places. It was in my love for Sappho, the divine feminine. I craved that nurturing, to be swallowed up in the arms of Aphrodite herself, rocked and held. But I was afraid to ask women for it, afraid they would die on me or reject me in some other way. So I looked for it in men who could not give it.

  But Claire and Bridget were heaping it on me voluntarily, without me even having to ask. They brought me more and more items: black lace bra with pink satin underneath, black lace thong, bra with leopard straps and black cups, black mesh panties with brown satin insert, demi bra, push-up bra, sheer lace bra with no underwear, black crotchless panties.

  I continued to soak in all the attention, the ushering of my transition from woman to whore. But after forty-five minutes of the fashion show, I began to get overwhelmed and hungry. What were we doing? There was a nothingness we all thought we were staving off, using the bras and panties as little lace shields. But now the nothingness was creeping in again and only I could feel it. Bridget’s compliments became annoying. What a fake. She didn’t really want to mother me and she didn’t think I was sexy. She just wanted to sell lingerie.

  I asked her straight up what some of the items cost, then began to sweat. $120 for a pair of underpants? $250 for a bra? Now it was too late. I was in too deep. We had become family of a sort. I would feel ashamed not buying anything.

  “Don’t worry about it,” said Claire. “I’ll buy them for you. As a gift. A welcome-to-fucking g
ift?”

  I wondered where she got all of her money. She didn’t seem to work. I guess the ex-husband had given her a cut in the divorce. Maybe alimony.

  “No, I can handle it,” I said. “But thank you. I think I only need two items anyway: one bra, one pair of underpants. Oh, and garters!”

  Claire laughed.

  “What are you going to, a bachelorette party?”

  “I don’t know, he asked for garters specifically,” I said.

  “What a wanker. Does he think you’re some kind of doll?”

  I actually liked being a doll. I wished Garrett would just pick out the bra and underwear too. It made it easier than having to decide on my own. My decisions had never led anywhere good. But Bridget, hopped up on a potential commission, was thrilled to sell me garters. She tsked Claire and told her that garters were chic for a modern woman. They were a nod to the classic, but you could do them in a modern way.

  I settled on the black lace thong, the black lace bra with the pink underneath, a plain pair of black velvet and satin garters, and some sheer black thigh-high stockings. The total was $395. I didn’t know what I was doing or who I was being, but I knew that I liked it better than me.

  19.

  The following morning I packed an overnight bag with everything in it. Then I took it all out, thinking I should probably just wear it all to the hotel. I didn’t know if I’d be staying over or if it would just be an afternoon thing. Staying over scared me. The thought of it made me feel trapped, like the way I felt once I begged myself into Jamie’s house and then was like “Now what?” I was already having “now what” and I wasn’t even in the bed with this guy. What if I sweat in my sleep or farted? I hadn’t slept with a new person in years. Farting in my sleep with Jamie was an entirely different situation than farting on a handsome stranger. Also, I didn’t know what to do about Dominic and his food and medication. If I left him at home could he wait to use the bathroom all night? I didn’t think so. Annika sometimes used a dog sitter named Moira who would sleep over. She had left me Moira’s number in case of emergencies. But I didn’t want Moira to tell Annika I’d been out all night.

  I decided I would just walk Dominic and feed him right before I left, maybe leave him some extra food. If I slept over I would make sure to come home first thing at dawn. And if he peed and pooped on the floor, so what? It could be cleaned up.

  Next I took to grooming my body. I couldn’t stop thinking about the possible anal. My asshole was definitely not a vacant space. What was I going to do? How was his dick going to get in if there was a shit blocking the way? Would there be a shit blocking his dick? Would he get shit on his dick? In the bathtub I tried to give myself a fake enema, swishing some of the water from the bath directly into my ass. It didn’t feel like anything was giving. I wondered how far in the canal it was. So I reached my finger in my butt and felt around. There was the tip of it, not far from the entrance.

  Dripping wet, I went over to the toilet and sat down. Dominic looked up at me from underneath his doggy eyebrows. I squeezed and squeezed, sliding around on the toilet, but nothing came out. How did others do this all the time? Who could be expected to have a pristine butthole? I slid my finger in and dug around. I tried to pull some out, and it worked. Now there was shit on my finger, some in the toilet, but still some in the hole. I’d only broken the shit in half inside me, not gotten it all out. So I went back in. Then I squeezed again. I felt like my eyeballs were going to pop out. Eventually the rest of the piece of shit came out. I could tell that it was the end.

  I got back in the bathtub and ran the water again. I washed off my finger and my butt four times each with rose soap. It was a fancy tub with jets. I turned them on and put my ass up to the jets, like a bidet. My hole felt tired already and no one had even fucked it yet. But then the jet started to turn me on. I felt a feeling I had never felt before, almost like my butthole was blossoming. I wondered if my whole ass canal was full of water. I imagined it was Garrett’s dick. I didn’t come but I felt really warm inside. This was exciting. I felt a bit like a Hollywood starlet, someone with something going on. A life was happening.

  20.

  I arrived at the Shalimar wearing the lingerie under a trench coat that I found in Steve’s closet. I’d done a lot of snooping in Annika’s house, looking for I wasn’t sure what. Something to help me know my sister better? Something to show me that the life she and Steve had together wasn’t as beautiful as it seemed to be? But there were no private journals with any confessionals, no secret passageways or locked boxes. Their relationship was like her ample ass: out in the open, giving no fucks, proudly just there. It was what it was.

  The trench made me feel petite and Hepburn-esque. Garrett texted to say that he was running late. I got nervous. It felt like my vagina and butthole were sweating. I went into one of the bathrooms in the lobby. It was big, like its own little room, with a marble floor and sink. It smelled like geraniums and I noticed an expensive candle burning. For some reason I thought about stealing it.

  I decided to hide in the bathroom until Garrett arrived. I stripped down out of the coat and wiped down my vagina and ass with soap. Each had now been scrubbed multiple times. Then I looked in the mirror. I really did look cute. The light in there was dim and I took a few pictures of myself: hand on hip, ass out, from the back and side. Garrett texted to say that he was waiting in the lobby. I decided I would make him wait a few minutes, not text back, but just appear.

  When I came out to the lobby he was checking his phone.

  “Hey,” I said.

  “Oh hey,” he said.

  He rose and looked me in the eyes. My body felt all needle-y.

  “Do you want to get a drink first?” he asked.

  “Sure,” I said. I wondered why we couldn’t just get drinks in the room. I had a vision involving Champagne. Also, my ass was starting to sweat again.

  We went to the bar and sat around drinking cocktails. It was dark and tropical in there, with black palm-tree wallpaper like the Beverly Hills Hotel on opium. This time we really didn’t have anything to say to each other. I guess he didn’t feel like talking about graphic design anymore and I wasn’t going to bring up fonts. He still didn’t ask me anything about me. It wasn’t awkward, though. The silence was thick with knowing that I would be kissing him soon, and other things. I imagined his tongue in my pussy. If only he would look me in the eye again.

  “All right,” he said as I took the last sip of my vodka and pineapple juice. “This is how I think we should do it. I’m going to go in first. You should wait here. Then in about five minutes or so you come back and knock on all four of them. I will let you into the one I am in.”

  “All four of what?” I asked.

  “The bathroom doors,” he said.

  “Wait,” I said. “I don’t understand. Why are we going to the bathroom?”

  “To fuck.” He laughed but he looked a little concerned. “I’ve always wanted to fuck in the bathrooms here.”

  “Oh,” I said. “I thought we were, like, getting a room or something.”

  “Oh shit, sorry. No. The fantasy was that we would fuck in the bathroom. Sorry. Did I not make that clear?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “Are you cool with that?” he asked.

  I tried not to look disappointed. But I was. What the hell? Was I not good enough for him to get a room? Did I look like I wanted to fuck in a bathroom? Maybe this was sexier. Maybe this was like an honor, that he thought I would be wild enough. Anybody could fuck in a hotel room. Not everyone could fuck in the lobby bathroom.

  “Okay,” I said. “I’m game.”

  “You’ll see,” he said. “You’ll love it. The bathrooms here are super lush. They’re like their own little worlds. It will be fucking hot.”

  I didn’t tell him that I was already well acquainted with the bathrooms, that I had alr
eady hidden out in one doing a photo shoot.

  “I can’t wait to make that ass go up and down,” he said, kissing me on the cheek.

  I ordered another vodka and pineapple juice. Was this weird or was it okay? I didn’t even remember what day it was, and I wondered what most people my age were doing right now. Probably something boring involving children and applesauce. I should consider myself blessed. They would probably kill to be fucking in a bathroom at the Shalimar. I wondered what Jamie would think if he knew. Would he see me as hot and exciting? Would he be jealous? Or would I just seem desperate and pathetic? I drank and tried to blot those words from my mind.

  There were men and women at the bar engaged in conversations. I didn’t know how people could stand it, the regular interactions, conscious dating, trying to pass as normal or interesting. Nobody was that interesting and certainly no one was normal. So why was everyone wearing a mask? Why wasn’t everyone fucking in a bathroom?

  It turned out that there were three bathroom doors, not four. Now that I was paying attention to them as the place of our fucking, I saw that they were big, varnished oak doors with knockers on them, as though you were entering someone’s house. I knocked on the first one.

  “Can I help you?” came a man’s voice.

  “Sorry!” I said.

  I knocked on the next door. Garrett opened it and pulled me in. He had me by the hips and kissed me hard, his tongue in my mouth. It made me feel good, like he wanted me.

  “Look me in the eyes,” I said.

  He looked into my eyes and unbuttoned Steve’s coat, lifting it off my shoulders and dropping it on the ground. Still looking me in the eyes, he hoisted me up by the waist and sat me on the big black marble sink. I was turned on by the action of what he was doing, but not turned on in my vagina yet. Or maybe my vagina was turned on, but I wasn’t there yet. Like, I was and I wasn’t. Part of me was acting and part of me was enjoying it.