The Kissing List

by Stephanie Reents

  He picked up two bracelets made from twisted wire and polished rocks and said, “These are ugly.”

  She snatched them: “No, they’re not. I got them in Costa Rica during my junior year abroad.”

  He started to open the top drawer of the dresser, which contained a jumble of athletic socks, knee-highs, swimming goggles, Jockey for women, camisoles, silky bras, and chocolate-covered espresso beans.

  “Stop,” Maureen said. “That’s private.”

  He went down the hall and into the bathroom. She listened for the door to shut so that she couldn’t hear the click of the medicine cabinet opening and then the rattle of pill bottles being inspected. It would serve him right if he stole Kaopectate. But the door didn’t shut, and instead she listened to his stream of urine splashing merrily into the toilet.

  He came back into the living room and sat down next to her, so close she could smell the fake pine scent of his soap.

  “You remind me of an ibex,” he said. “I think it’s ibex I saw last year when I was hiking up north.”

  Maureen wrinkled her nose. “Wrong continent. Maybe I remind you of a deer or an elk.”

  “No, that’s not what I mean,” he said. “I mean an ibex. I think that’s what they were. You’re skittish like an ibex.”

  Maureen made a mental note of skittish and tried to keep a straight face.

  “Well, they don’t live here,” she said. “They live in Africa or Asia.”

  “Whatever,” the Porn Star said with a degree of indifference that appalled her. Then he leaned close and started kissing her.

  She was surprised, but she liked it. He kissed well. That was something that you could never know in advance, whether someone’s lips would have the right amount of give, whether they’d be wet enough or too wet, whether you’d be dealing with a bossy tongue or hungry teeth.

  The Porn Star knew how to do it all right in his own way, and she didn’t mind—in fact it thrilled her—when he moved her hands underneath his sweater and said, “If there’s one thing you gotta learn, it’s that the hands go under the shirt.” Then he pushed up her shirt, shoved a hand under her bra, and twisted her nipple as if he were taking the cap off a tube of toothpaste.

  “Ow!” Maureen screamed, though mostly not in pain. She had no idea what would happen next, and this secretly excited her. “Look, let’s get back to this issue of the antelope. Why don’t we check the dictionary?”

  “Shut the fuck up,” he said, “and relax.”

  “Mon dieu,” she said. “What a brute. I never suspected.”

  “You like a brute,” he said. He took a couple of breaths.

  “Well,” he said. He breathed again.

  Then she realized what the pauses had been about. Not excitement, not that at all. He’d been focusing on the logistics of freeing his penis from his pants. Sprung, he turned his attention back to her.

  “Like it?” he said, beginning to masturbate.

  The man with the dick in his hand. It reminded Maureen of taramasalata on spinach ciabatta, her favorite kind of sandwich in her final year of Oxford, when she’d loosened up and become a pescetarian. The incidental poetry of life! You’re kissing a guy you barely know and he takes his cock for a walk. She was scared but also amused.

  My little Porn Star, she thought, kissing him.

  My Little Pony.

  My Little Porn Story.

  But this wasn’t her little Porn Story.

  The Porn Star pushed her back, pinning her on the sofa cushions. “Suck my nipple,” he instructed.

  She found it in his hairy chest and gently bit down.

  “That’s right,” he said.

  What a lark! To see his private parts!

  “Look at it,” he said.

  “Touch it,” he said.

  “Yeah, that’s right,” he said.

  This is what happens when there’s a man with his dick in his hand sitting on your good living room couch, the one you’ve forbidden yourself to eat on, and you’re being put through the drills. You alternate between fear (There’s a strange man with his dick in his hand!) and curiosity (The man is taking his cock for a walk! Where is he going? Where has he been?). You also think the whole thing is a bit absurd (Taramasalata on spinach ciabatta!).

  The Porn Star started to push Maureen’s head down to his crotch. She said no, but he continued putting pressure on the back of her neck. She said no, no, no. No! It wasn’t that she hadn’t done this and that she wouldn’t at some point in the future, but she first needed a reading on him. He stopped, and this allowed her to veer from fear back toward curiosity, observing them in a detached way: that man with his jeans bandaged around his hairy thighs and that woman with a roll of fat squeezed over the waistband of her pants. Maureen made a mental note to remind herself that everyone looks fatter in the presence of someone else. She saw them wrestling. She heard him speak. “I need you to suck my nipple. Yeah, that’s right.” The woman’s hair was yanked, and she rubbed the side of her nose, a nervous tic. She observed her twist the man’s hair around her index finger and tug. She wanted to discuss with this woman her earlier prejudice against hirsute men. What a funny word: hirsute; suit of hair. Waiting for the next scene, she watched.

  The Porn Star had picked up Maureen in the mall before Christmas. He and the Bambino had been waiting in a line that coiled tightly behind the elves’ cabin for a short interview and photo op with Saint Nick. Only $10, the sign said, Make your children’s dreams come true. The Bambino looked like any other kid. She was wearing a red miniskirt and purple tights and clutching the Porn Star’s hand. Occasionally she hopped, hopped, hopped on one leg, then triple-stuttered on the other, like the thought of sitting on Santa’s soft lap sent a shock of excitement through her small body. In fact, all the kids vibrated as if they were screwed into an electric current originating in the elves’ cabin. The only thing that messed up the effect were the parents, motionless lumps of shopping bags, winter coats, extra eggnog pounds, and worries about how it would all get done. Maureen didn’t envy them, or the Porn Star, for that matter, though she could tell there was something different about him. He wasn’t wearing a heavy winter coat, just a brown wool shirt, and when the Bambino hopped, the Porn Star matched it with a simple jig. When the little girl said something, the Porn Star knelt down beside her to listen.

  Maureen was staring at him when he looked up. She smiled. He smiled. Then she hurried on to Sears to buy towels. In the middle of the bath and bedding section, she turned around, and there he was with the Bambino in tow.

  “Lunch?” he asked.

  “Lunch,” he pressed.

  They settled on coffee, which was lucky because the pauses had begun to exceed the audible exchanges by the time Maureen finished her small latte. The Porn Star and the Bambino shared a large orange juice over ice. In the midst of a lull, the Porn Star told the Bambino not to sulk.

  “The Bambino’s upset because we lost our place in the Santa line,” he said.

  “That’s terrible,” Maureen said to the little girl.

  “My real name’s Bambi,” the Bambino blurted out. “But Daddy doesn’t like it.”

  “Sweetheart, that’s not true. But you deserve better.”

  To Maureen he said, “My ex,” and shook his head.

  When the Porn Star asked Maureen for her number, she gave it to him. Why not? Six months passed before she heard from him.

  “Who?” Maureen had asked.

  He mentioned the Bambino to jog her memory.

  “Oh, right,” she said.

  They made plans to meet for drinks.

  The second time the Porn Star came by her house, three days after his first visit, it was after ten, and Maureen was winding down, picking dead leaves off the potted tree in the kitchen, making a mental list of everything she had to do the next day: take the cat to the vet, return library books, make an engagement square, cook ratatouille. She would not finish everything. In fact, she knew she wouldn’t start making the square fo
r her friend’s engagement quilt either tomorrow or over the weekend, even though she was supposed to have mailed it off a week ago. What a terrible idea, she thought, expecting us to want to make squares for a quilt. Who had the time? The effects of marriage on her friends were curious. Who would have known that Lila, a bond trader who could best any man at dirty-joke telling, would want an engagement quilt and a white dress with a veil and train from Vera Wang? At their weddings, Maureen studied the faces of her friends for signs—of what, she was not certain. Perhaps she wanted some evidence that their bodies had been temporarily inhabited by aliens from the planet of Beautiful Brides (where every girl dreamed of being a fairy princess). Perhaps she was looking for signs of realism—vows in which the couple declared they bonded over “ordering takeout and reading the Sunday paper on Saturday nights, having cheerful sex a couple of times a week, and gardening.” Her beliefs in the artificiality of it all were vindicated when a friend from work confided that she planned to carry a ten-pound weight in her bouquet. “I want my arms to look really cut,” she explained. If Maureen ever married, which was about as likely as terrorists targeting forty-something spinsters, she would most definitely not have a wedding. No, she’d take the bus to the courthouse, or whichever branch of the government was charged with bestowing marriage licenses (aka tax breaks) and pay for hers in pennies. Afterward, she and her wimpy but intellectually beefy husband would go out for a fancy vegetarian meal.

  The sound of the knock startled Maureen. The Porn Star was standing at the front door, wearing a knit ski mask.

  “Who’s that?” she asked through the door. She was scared at first, but then she closed her eyes and chanted her mantra: Be brave. Be brave. Be brave. Her whole life, she’d been working at willing away fear. She thought this was what strong women did.

  “Who do you think it is?” he answered.

  Maureen recognized his voice, even though it was muffled by the mask. And then she recognized his shoes, white with faded red trimming and stripes. “Unmask yourself, man, and then I’ll think about letting you enter.” Her first laugh was forced, but then the lightness caught, and her face relaxed, and laughing was as effortless as breathing.

  The Porn Star peeled back the stocking cap and grinned. Maureen noticed again that he had strong white teeth. A line from a fairy tale popped into her head: “The better to eat you with, my dear. And with that …” She pushed it out of her mind. The Porn Star had been raised Mormon, his teeth protected from stain-causing substances like coffee and nicotine by church law. She opened the door. “What’s with the mask?”

  “Don’t know,” he said. “Just had it in the back of the truck.”

  The third time, he showed up at midnight. By then the situation had moved from curious (Oh, how silly, there’s his willy!) to strange (From planet Venus comes his penis).

  “You could do this at home, you know,” Maureen told the Porn Star. “Rent a movie or something.”

  He looked hurt. “I don’t like movies that much.”

  “Do you really think this is a turn-on for me?”

  “Kiss me,” he said.

  “Tell me how to touch you,” he whispered.

  “You have five minutes,” she answered. “At 12:43, you must leave.”

  She was balanced on her hands and knees above him. His foot snaked around her thigh and tightened to flip her over. He brought her hand to his lips, licking her palm.

  “Hmm,” she murmured.

  His mouth found each of her fingers and sucked. She let the room fade—maybe she even fell asleep for a few moments—but when she woke up, the Porn Star was closing her spit-slickened hand around his penis. That was all he ever wanted her to do.

  “No, no, no,” Maureen shouted and began pulling up his white briefs. “No.”

  “Wait a sec,” he huffed. “Just a little …”

  “Get a trench coat. Hide in dark alleys. But please pull those up. I’m sick of looking at it.”

  Maureen turned it into a funny story for her friends. This is what women did: put an amusing spin on situations that were almost terrible. It was admittedly a weird sort of bravado, but she had her friends in stitches, repeating the things he said:

  This here’s my hat. It’s for keeping my noggin dry.

  You’re a filly chomping to get out of the gates.

  You turn me on because you make me talk smart.

  “I don’t know,” said her friend Sylvia after Maureen noted the word consummate was enough to make the Porn Star whip out his dick.

  “That’s the punch line,” Maureen groaned. “Your cue to start laughing.” That they’d become friends was mildly shocking. Sylvia had stolen Maureen’s grad-school boyfriend, but they’d bumped into each other at the same old boyfriend’s wedding and bonded at the after-after party, where they both got a little weepy (well, mostly Sylvia; Maureen didn’t do tears) about seeing Todd jisming with joy over a woman. They compared notes on his sexual performance to cheer themselves up. (Both had been mildly disappointed, not by the equipment, mind you, but by the owner’s inability to make good use of it.)

  Now Sylvia said, “It sounds a little risky.”

  “What? You want me to play the damsel in distress?”

  “I just want you to be safe,” Sylvia protested.

  “Is this why our mothers burned their bras?” Maureen asked. “To play it safe?”

  Another friend counseled getting to know him better: “The poor Porn Star, or whatever his real name is. It sounds like he wants you to take him seriously. He doesn’t have anyone smart to talk to.”

  “Please. Listen to what you’re saying.”

  “No, I mean it. You should be nicer to him. Maybe you should have a salon. Weren’t you one of the lucky few invited to Goldman’s salons in Oxford? The Porn Star could talk about the complexities of unwittingly becoming a porn star. I can just hear it: ‘Hello, my name is Jed. I mean my name was Jed until I met Maureen. Now I’m not sure who I am.’ ”

  “N-O,” Maureen said. “Besides, he has a girlfriend.”

  “Oh, he does?” the friend asked, her voice becoming nasally. “In that case, you should be nice to yourself and get rid of him. Unless, of course, he’s great in bed.”

  “Haven’t found out.” Maureen started to laugh.

  “Nice snort,” the friend said. “You’re screwing around but not screwing?”

  “This is coitus in the age of simulation, postindustrial intercourse,” she explained. “Sex without sex. Bodies only touching at three points: my mouth on his nipple, his knee between my legs, my hand on his penis, but usually just for a couple of seconds. Or, alternatively, his mouth on my nipple, my hand at the nape of his neck, his hand on my butt.”

  “Less messy,” the friend offered.

  “Less everything,” Maureen answered. “Less of less.”

  Two weeks after the Porn Star’s first visit, the two of them sat in Maureen’s backyard drinking gin and tonics. It was either very civilized, or Maureen was trying hard to salvage her self-respect. Everything was in bloom—the lilacs, the crab apple tree, the dandelions, and the yellow and purple crocuses—and the grass was still damp from the sprinklers. The Porn Star was wearing khakis with crisp creases running down the front and back, a nice brown belt, and a white dress shirt with the cuffs rolled up, revealing his thick, sturdy forearms. It was the beginning of the weekend, and Maureen felt happy. She thought that perhaps she and the Porn Star could become the kind of friends who sat in her backyard from time to time, the ice cubes rattling in their cocktail glasses. She imagined laughing over how they’d met, and someday even telling him the story of his nickname. I will try to be nicer, she thought, which was a funny thing to tell herself. I will stop playing games. She made a mental note that the Porn Star’s name was Jed Caraway. She looked at him. He had reached the age at which wrinkles formed in the corners of his eyes when he smiled. She handed him a red and green cocktail napkin left over from Christmas. He took a piece of bruschetta from the blue plate.


  Overhead, the sky was the same color as the plate. She wanted to point out the similarity to Jed. She wanted to show him that everything wasn’t a pale imitation of the original. Instead she said to herself, “This blue is true,” and petted the cat who was rubbing against her bare legs and against the metal legs of the lawn chair where she sat. The tomatoes were sweet; the olive oil, vinegar, and tomato juice had soaked into the center of the bread, but the crust was still crisp. The contrast created a nice texture. It was delicious, and Maureen hoped that Jed might comment, a kind of compliment-comment. But they sat quietly, chewing the bruschetta and sipping their gin and tonics.

  Jed started to talk to her about erotic things, about the most erotic thing he’d ever seen. It was simple. A woman whose shirt was unbuttoned too low. She was kneeling down to retrieve a book from the bottom shelf at Barnes and Noble, and he came around the corner, in search of a how-to guide on electrical wiring, and saw down her shirt, a peekaboo of flesh and satin. Surprise is sexy, he said. Less is more. He winked and asked Maureen about her most erotic moment.

  Well, she started, it was the summer after she graduated. “I was on a road trip with friends. That part doesn’t matter, I guess. Anyway, I was at a gas station, and there were two guys there; they had the hood of the car up, fixing it. One of them was wearing jeans and a jeans jacket with nothing underneath. He looked at me, and for some reason, I didn’t look away, which was what I normally did when I was in college, when I used to be embarrassed to look too closely at strange men. I kept staring at him, and he stared back at me and slowly slid open his jacket, exposing his bare chest for me to see.”

  Maureen paused, thinking about why she’d been afraid to look at men, how she had once believed that looking could invite something unwanted.