Guy

by Jowita Bydlowska

  “Vacation. The grey house over there,” I point in the direction of the beach house. It’s a four-bedroom, two-garage nautical castle complete with solar panels and white wooden columns that support all three decks. It belongs to me, paid for courtesy of my grandmother’s will.

  “The big grey one? Dope,” Kelly says.

  “House-sitting for my friend,” I say. Dope.

  “Not yours?” she says, her voice like a sigh. I imagine her life already taking shape: assessing and comparing friends’ possessions. One friend’s car, another friend’s pool. Another friend’s graduation party. Just like her mother, probably, with her friends’ Botox jobs, husbands, summer homes and children graduating from prestigious colleges. “Nice gig,” she says.

  “It is. Well, it was nice to meet you. Gotta take this guy home.”

  “Which guy?” says the maybe-Four from the picnic table. How could she hear that far?

  “Nice to meet you too,” says Dolores. “Nice to meet you, Dog.”

  I walk away. The sky is turning even bloodier around the edges. The beach is famous for its spectacular sunsets. Around this time, you start seeing the beach people holding their phones up, taking pictures of the sun. Romantics.

  I know that Dolores is looking at me walking away. She sees my wide back, the way my calves spasm slightly. A twitch that lasts a moment too long. I’ve had women tell me that I strut a little. This used to bother me, but it doesn’t anymore. It’s not a put-on strut like what my best friend, Jason, does with his walk. He’s just trying hard to not be mediocre, which he is.

  For me, the way I move, it’s natural.

  “It’s like you’re trying to pick a fight,” Gloria, my girlfriend, said once.

  But I’m not trying to pick a fight.

  Just the opposite.

  2

  AS A CHILD, I LIVED WITH MY MOTHER, MY SISTER AND MY father in a small town in Ontario, Canada, where everyone knew that the dentist was a drunk and that the one, part-time homeless lady lost her kid in a freak accident in a silo after her husband had left her for the drunken dentist’s receptionist. There was a library and a courthouse in our small town. Also, three high schools. My mother taught at one of the high schools. My father worked at the courthouse.

  My early childhood was uneventful. There was one funeral – my mother’s mother, whose will divided the family, with us ending up on the lucky side – and one birth – my younger sister.

  At twelve, I was a well-adjusted boy. No setting things on fire or drinking my mother’s vodka. I never did drugs. I was not into upsetting my parents since that would draw their attention to me. This is why I never bothered telling my father about walking in on my mother touching hands with our neighbour, Karl. Karl who – I could always sense – wanted to, or had done so and wanted to again, fuck my mother. It was doglike, the way they seemed to pant at each other as they talked.

  I also never got caught with my pants rolled down in my mother’s underwear drawer, spending myself right into the wooden corners of it. That was probably the most troubling sexual thing that I’d done in my life. I’ve never done truly creepy things like touch my little sister when tasked with changing her shitty diaper. (The takeaway? It’s not my fault she was anorexic in her twenties.)

  Overall, I was a good kid. So it was a surprise to everyone when Caroline happened. The way I think of it – Caroline happened – is intentional. It was an event, like a hurricane, threatening enough that it gets its own name. Though looking back on it, it was more like Guy happened to Caroline; perhaps that’s what she would say.

  Caroline was one of my mother’s students. My mother had an altruistic side, and she provided tutoring for the underprivileged kids.

  Every Tuesday and Thursday evening, the basement filled with those retards sitting or standing beside my mother at a large table, their homework spread out in front of them like war maps.

  Caroline was older than me, fifteen to my thirteen. But she looked closer to my age with her almost breastless body. She was not pretty. Not only that, she wasn’t even ugly. She was just something drawn randomly. A bunch of squiggles and lines that made up the form of a girl so incredibly uninteresting that she immediately fascinated me. I could not understand it fully, or explain it to myself as I acknowledged it. It was as if her lack of attractiveness was some kind of a vacuum for my attractiveness. We complemented each other that way.

  The first time I saw her, she was holding some papers in her hand, nervously. She wanted to read her homework to my mother or something. Something that stressed her out. I stressed her out too. Before I turned away, I sensed her attention on me. You can tell those things. I remember the intensity, the urging…the desperation even, as I felt it. Was she in trouble, and was I the only person capable of saving her? Her attention was thrilling, the obviousness of it, the way it surrounded me and made me feel powerful, big. A big boy.

  “You’re so adorable,” she said later, in a mocking way. “You’re like my annoying little brother.”

  She was probably unaware of the fact that the whole time she was scanning me, I was thinking about things I had seen in German nudie mags. What would it look like to shove my dick in her mouth? Or flip her onto all fours to try to penetrate her? I was imagining pinching her tiny nipples till she squeaked. I knew about the things people did to each other. I was always good at research.

  ***

  She started staying longer after her tutoring lessons, and my parents didn’t mind. We sat in the backyard – it was spring – and talked. I dwelled on the details of her. A tiny braided bracelet. How delicate it looked wrapped around the protruding wrist bone. I wanted to take the bracelet in my mouth, taste the dirty threads that had accumulated her sweat.

  Her knees. A dark spot from a scab that left a mark, like a kitten’s paw. Also, the way her hair looked wet on a hot day when it got too greasy from being outside. Or how she scratched the side of her leg and then would sometimes clean the same nail with her bottom teeth, which was disgusting, but somehow wasn’t.

  She was a collection of images, impressions – artifacts that I’d bag up and file for later. All those images, parts of Caroline brought out something in me – a need to be in contact with another human being. Not just any human being: her, specifically. It was sexual, but it was not exactly about sex. I couldn’t tell what it was. It felt as if there was a short-circuit in my brain, some pleasant malfunction. Yet. I was troubled by this need; it was as if I absolutely had to be around her all the time. It was like the flu. I hoped it would pass. I wasn’t sure if this was okay, what I felt. In retrospect, it was probably just puberty.

  ***

  Sometime near the end of the summer, I lost my virginity to Caroline. It happened on the weekend when my parents were away with my younger sister.

  Caroline undressed me like I was a child. She undressed herself.

  We lay side by side on my parents’ bed. We stared at each other. Looked over each other’s bodies. Our bodies were foreign planets, newly discovered.

  We didn’t talk.

  I had already guessed the outlines of her breasts and predicted the flat stomach. But I was still shocked by her neat-but-bushy mound. It was the same mousy colour as the hair on her head. It seemed very exotic. She looked nothing like the hairless women from the nudie magazines full of pneumatic lips and tits.

  She pulled me on top of her and aimed my dick at her little vagina. She moved her hips. I figured I had to move along with her, and as I did I penetrated her. She was soft and wet inside. Hot like breath. It was like nothing I’d ever experienced before. It was eternally comforting. I was falling into her softness. Too fast, too recklessly.

  I came.

  She laughed with delight and then wrapped her arms around me, hugging me; she was bigger than me. After we fell apart, she snuggled up to me. She breathed “I love you” into my neck.

  Immediately, I started to develop a headache. It was the sort of headache you get from running for too long or some
other strenuous physical effort. I was in no way exhausted from the sex. Yet the headache was creeping in regardless. Something else was happening, too.

  I felt it first physically. It started with her arm. Her arm around me got heavy, as if it was her leg instead. Her body next to me became too long. There seemed to be no escape from it.

  Still, her heat and smell made my own body respond with an intensity that terrified me. I gripped my dick. I held it, feeling it get hard. I wondered if by sleeping with Caroline I had unleashed something bad. Was I now capable of violence? Murder? I felt capable of it. I didn’t know where it came from. I didn’t know what to do but to lie still until it passed. I kept thinking of fucking: her, the women in nudie mags. My mother too, or someone who was like my mother. My homeroom teacher.

  I wanted to run. I wanted to push my dick right back into Caroline. Her heavy arm kept me pinned to the mattress. I imagined that the arm pinning me down was capable of protecting me from whatever was happening inside me. I kept still. I waited. I let go of my dick.

  Eventually, I fell asleep and dreamt of being covered in thick, dense blankets.

  ***

  After that weekend, things were different between Caroline and me. I developed other acquaintances in the neighbourhood: boys. I spent my afternoons playing video games in their basements, or smoking in the garbage-infested park by the river that ran through town.

  One evening, Caroline accosted me on my way home. The meadow near our house was loud with buzzing insects. She came out of the darkness and threw herself at me.

  I did nothing. I let her hold me with my arms at my sides like a doll. I imagined myself to be a doll. Like a doll, I waited patiently for it to be over, to be put back in my box. Instead, Caroline tried to kiss me.

  I moved my face away until she stopped trying to kiss me. She needed to leave me alone. I said that. I thought she would understand – it would free her up too, to have more time to spend with friends.

  “You little piece of shit.”

  I felt my dick stir. It confused me. “I’m sorry,” I said.

  I noticed then that she had changed her look. She was wearing makeup. Her hair was blonder. She dyed it, like my mom. She was trying to make herself pretty. If I had been a little piece of shit, I would’ve said something to her about it – how it didn’t work – but I wasn’t even sure that it didn’t work. Maybe she was prettier now?

  “Do you love me?” Her voice sounded small and angry, like an ugly little animal that peeped after being stepped on.

  “No. I don’t think so,” I said, truthfully.

  “I hate you.”

  “Okay.”

  “Okay?” She pushed me away. She lifted her hand as if to slap me. She stroked my cheek instead. And then, for a brief moment, I felt what I had felt before, the longing.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. I didn’t mean it. But her face softened.

  “You don’t even know,” she said.

  She said other things after that. Things I’ve heard again many times. Not from her, but from others: that I had opened up something in her, that she had changed because of me, that I made her feel beautiful.

  How?

  I didn’t know.

  “I’ll be okay,” she said, finally, and I thought what happened was a good thing, that I had done a good thing. I knew then I would do it again. I’d get better at it. I knew that I was capable of changing someone, someone plain and insignificant like Caroline, of turning her into a person who could light up from inside, if even for a moment.

  It was like magic. I wanted to make that magic again (and again!) because that was what I seemed to be good at. I wanted another Caroline, another devotion like that. I believe I became instantly addicted to it. You cannot fight addiction. It installs itself in your head and doesn’t leave. You can try to control it. But it’s always there, a faint whisper somewhere behind you.

  ***

  Caroline ended up dating a senior from her high school. He didn’t knock her up. She didn’t drop out of school to do drugs. She didn’t become obese. She finished school and went to college to become a nurse. She became a nurse and eventually renewed friendship with my mother when my mother was dying of cancer in the hospital where Caroline worked. I felt proud of how well Caroline turned out.

  3

  AFTER CAROLINE, DESPITE MY NEWLY DISCOVERED PASSION, the post-sex repulsion happened almost every time. I’d sleep with a girl and then I’d want her gone. Instinctively, I’d pick the girls who were used to having to go. I suppose it was exactly like addiction: excitement, remorse. Confusion. Compulsion.

  The girls I fucked asked no questions. They carried condoms in their purses. They always seemed happy if I asked them to stay the night, but they were also prepared to pick their clothes off the floor in the dark and let themselves out before dawn.

  In college, these were the girls who published articles about how much they loved themselves and their curves, but they’d show an absolute disregard for themselves if I suggested a blow job in the back of the car. The next week they would march around campus with signs, screaming about men raping them with their eyes, about wanting to go topless and so on.

  I ignored the hysteria. It didn’t exist. It had nothing to do with me. I was not going to politicize my sex life. Sexually, I had my own interests. My neuroses were my biggest concern. I carried on my usual internal battle: one hour I’d be obsessing over some ridiculous trait like the way a girl hooked her ankle around the other ankle; the way she would defend it, later, that gymnastic feat, like she didn’t mean it. She meant it. They meant it. It was meant to impress me.

  ***

  There were so many girls, and many didn’t even leave more than a wisp of memory. Their artifacts: two moles beside each other on a face; a fat back; cellulite-ribbed thighs; stretch marks on flat breasts; inverted nipples; a hairy stomach; a row of small, even teeth; teeth with too much gums; red, round knees like heads; very long labia minora; etcetera. They had their smells: mint, burnt sugar, cigarettes and candy, vanilla, cookies, old books, cinnamon, Korean noodle shop, alcohol, perfume that brought tears to my eyes, shit, spit, urine, formaldehyde.

  Yet, I was never able to maintain interest for more than a few dates.

  “Should I call you a cab?”

  She, they, always said no. And then she, they, would go.

  ***

  But, eventually, spending so much time on a campus infested with feminist hysteria did have its effect. I became convinced it was my duty to feel bad about these encounters. Or at least to act as if I felt bad.

  ***

  I gave up sex for a while, but women were always around me, always flashing their smiles and widening their eyes. There were so many women, so many signals that needed responding to. How could I ignore it? I did, though. I felt holy, like a priest. I lived a pure life.

  I stopped going out. I locked myself in my dorm room. I paced and paced. I lay on my bed and thought of a song I heard once in a sad girl’s dorm room. I fucked this girl after a poetry book launch. She was the poet. She had a small face, rat teeth, a purple cloud of hair. In her room, we sat on the floor. A skinny dog named after a flower tried to nip at my ankles and she locked it in the bathroom. She drank vodka and smoked. She said she knew I would fuck her and never call her again. She played the song that went like this: “Is that all there is?”

  That was the line that kept playing in my head: Is that all there is? I felt embarrassed about having it play in my head, but at least I wasn’t doing it in front of another person like the poet girl. Also, I thought it was a good sign that I still cared about things like that – about embarrassing myself.

  Eventually, because of my confusion, I began to think I was going crazy. The campus posters suggested seeing therapists. I went to see one. She said I was stressed, possibly needed a break. I was okay – academically – but I felt unsafe. I listened to the suggestion. I reported myself as if I was a person reporting another person.

  I went to
a hospital. It didn’t seem like a terrible idea. I enjoy new experiences.

  I spent two days talking to mental-health professionals, reading magazines and eating Jell-O. I told one of the psychiatrists about feeling embarrassed about a song playing in my head, but also how I thought that was a good sign.

  “What kind of song?”

  “An old classic. A song from my childhood that my mother used to play. I miss my childhood,” I said.

  “Why is it a good sign? To hear this song?”

  “I think it shows that I’m invested,” I said, and the psychiatrist nodded. She had straight black hair, dyed, harsh. I imagined holding it in fistfuls, pulling it like reins.

  I left that session and slid around the hallway in my slippers. It was the first time I wore slippers round the clock since childhood. As predicted, there was a certain sense of adventure to it all.

  I was not crazy, and I didn’t want to die. If I’d wanted to die, I’d have known it. It was time to re-evaluate. I had no religion, but there were things I believed in. Like my nature. I talked to psychiatrists about that. How I wanted to re-evaluate, how I wanted to live in accordance to my nature.

  “What is your nature?”

  “I like people. Ultimately, I like people. I want to find a girlfriend.”

  “This doesn’t sound too bad to me.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Are you hurting anyone? Your guilt is only hurting you.”

  “You’re right. That is very perceptive.”

  It was perceptive. I hoped it showed in my face that I was getting better already. It did show. The psychiatrist was pleased, I could tell. She leaned back in her chair. I thought how the pink blouse was a great colour on her, how it offset her brown skin. I wanted to lick her, taste her skin. It was impossible to tell what kind of tits she had. I was sure she was wearing one of those shield bras, round and padded.

  “I look forward to finishing school,” I said.

  The psychiatrist smiled. I was saying all the right things.