I whispered too, as if there were someone else there who we shouldn't disturb. "I was asleep, but then I woke up, and now I can't go back."
"I can't sleep either," she said.
"Why not?" I wondered if she was excited about her audition for HBO.
"I was thinking about Peter," she began. "Trying to figure out why I'm so attracted to him."
Another thing I hadn't told her. That he'd asked me out. That we were seeing each other the next day. Which was already that day.
"So what do you think it is?"
"Probably just the old actress-director thing. They become so parental, it's like you can't help but want them to love you best."
"You mean like more than Annie?"
"Or you."
"Or Carol." We both sort of laughed at that.
"She gets to be with him more than any of us."
"I think she's madly in love with him," I said.
"I think so too."
And that's when I thought I might tell Kelly something else about myself. Something that was a very closely guarded secret. Because I didn't want her to think that she had any reason to worry about competition from me. She should know that she had nothing to worry about. That any potential relationship I might have with Peter was doomed to fizzle as soon as he got closer to me. As soon as sex would enter the picture.
But I hesitated.
It was one of those horrible secret things that you never want anyone to know about yourself because it's so humiliating. One of those horrible things that you want everyone to know because if they knew and they still thought you were interesting, then maybe it wasn't that bad.
And maybe they could even save you. From yourself.
"I have a confession to make," I said, looking into the darkness of the room.
"What?"
"Promise you won't lose all respect for me?"
"No."
"Then I can't tell you."
"Fine."
Silence. I couldn't believe she would leave it at that.
"Don't you want to know?" I asked.
"If you want to tell me."
"I don't want to tell you."
"Then don't."
Silence.
"I can't believe," I said, "that you aren't curious enough to hear what I might say that you won't reassure me that you won't judge me."
"But I probably will judge you. I won't be able to help myself."
"So lie."
"I don't want to lie."
"Lying to make someone feel reassured can be a good thing. Because it enables them to open up about something they're scared about, and then they'll probably be relieved once they're gotten it off their chest."
"But exposing yourself can be very upsetting. I'd think twice if I were you."
After a moment I said, "You don't tell very much about yourself, do you."
"I do when I want to."
"Because people can be cruel?"
"Because it isn't anyone's business."
“Wait.” I had to think about this. "Don't you think it's important for people to know about each other?"
"What do you mean?"
"To know the truth."
"What truth?"
"What do you mean?"
"There is no such thing as the truth," she said. "There's just what you want to believe."
Silence. Darkness. I could not sleep. The man with the pot belly and the dogs couldn't either, because we heard him taking them out on a walk. Evidently the rain had stopped.
"Maybe I should just go home," I said.
"Maybe you should just tell me," she said.
"But you just talked me out of it."
"But you want to."
"Can I trust you?"
"Probably not."
Having her tell me I couldn't trust her made me trust her more. I forced it out. "I've never had an orgasm.”
"What?"
"You heard me."
Pause. Beat. Dizzy sensation.
"How old are you?"
"Twenty-five."
She didn't say anything for a few moments. And then she said, "That's sad."
"Pitiful. Right?"
"I had my first orgasm when I was seven."
"That's young."
"Yes."
"And you remember that?"
"Yes."
"So, what, someone... it was, like, incest or something?"
"No, silly. I gave it to myself. I was masturbating."
"Oh."
"Don't tell me you don't masturbate."
I frowned.
"You have to," she said, "or you'll never learn what you like. I mean, what do you do when you're in the mood and no one else is around?"
"I've tried. It doesn't work."
"Wow," she said. "That's sad. We're going to have to do something about this."
I wasn't sure what she meant. Buy a book? Some kind of instructional video? Hands on training? Was she referring to the orgasm problem or the masturbating or a package deal? I didn't know and didn't want to ask. I just felt relieved that someone finally knew who might actually be able to help.
"You know about your clitoris, right?"
"Yes."
"Don't you ever touch yourself there?"
"No."
"You're afraid to?"
"I just don't feel compelled to."
"Don't you think that's odd?"
"Yes. Especially in this day and age, it is very odd."
"So you have to do something about it. You have to explore. Touch yourself."
I have to say, I'm thinking this is a big mistake. I shouldn't be going into all this. It must make me seem like I was an idiot. People only want to hear about promiscuous women who have superficial one-night stands with men they meet at hip parties. Or famous movie stars. Not a depressed, boring, non-orgasmic younger sister. But I've gotten this far, so I guess I'd better go on.
"Once you learn how to bring yourself to orgasm," she said, "then you'll be able to tell your lover how to give you one."
This seemed utterly impossible to accomplish. It would be like wanting to be a cheerleader even though you'd never been able to do the splits. And then trying out for the squad and somehow managing, miraculously, to end your routine with the splits.
"If sex is such a natural thing," I said, "why does it seem so hard to get it right?"
"It is natural. If it doesn't get all screwed up."
"Well doesn't it seem like most people are screwed up one way or another?"
"I don't know about most people. A lot of people are, though." She paused and then she said, "I'm pretty screwed up about sex myself."
"You are?"
"When I was ten, this fourteen-year-old boy who lived down the block locked me in the basement of his house and made me have sex with him. His younger sister sat there and watched the whole thing."
I didn't know what to say to this. "Wow," I said. I felt a moment of triumph. Finally she had admitted something to me!
And then I remembered the appropriate comment. "That must've been incredibly frightening. I'm sorry you had to go through that."
But the truth was, this tidbit made me even more in awe of her than before. She had experienced the dark side of sex. She'd done too much. That was so much more interesting than not doing enough.
"And the weird thing is," she said, "it really turns me on. Ever since that happened, I can have an orgasm if I think back to that. Every single time. It turns me on. Just talking about it now is turning me on."
Needless to say, I was feeling a bit tense.
There was an awkward moment, a moment during which I didn't know if the conversation was over, or if it would go on to something more.
When suddenly I felt her hand on my thigh. Brushing up my thigh. Making this chill. And my mouth started to water. Not water. Salivate. That word. And then. And then. And then her hand reached under my nightgown (her nightgown, actually—it had tiny pink flowers on it) and her fingers found their way down there, and s
he put her palm on my... my... as she would say "cunt" (not that I would say it that way) and then she was inserting her finger inside my vagina (another word I hate) and her finger gently, gently, gently petting me inside—I lay still as a log, paralyzed—but I wanted to see what would happen, but I didn't want to see, and I didn't want to know—and her finger went in deep and then came back out. In deep, then out. I wanted it again. I wanted it to stop. Not now... not us... too much... now! And then she leaned over me and started to kiss me. Her lips on my lips! And I turned my head away. I couldn't take it. And I rolled over, rolled away to face the wall, the safety of the hard blank wall. And I heard her sigh—more with annoyance than disappointment, I imagined, at least—and we lay there for a minute in silence. My nightgown pulled down, legs clamped together, eyes squeezed shut.
I tried to tell myself to look at the things other people did all the time that are really shocking and to see that this was nothing, so how could I bother to feel any shame about this at all? But I did feel shame. And I felt shame that I felt shame because it shouldn't have been anything to feel ashamed of.
"Well," she said.
"I'm sorry," I said.
I was sure she knew, anyway, that it was a lack of courage, not interest, on my part. A determination to be "normal." And this was not "normal" for me, not nice little sweet little nice little normal little girl me. Life's ambition: don't do anything that means you aren't normal. Because I already felt so abnormal.
"You know you want it," she finally said.
"But I can't," I finally said.
"Yes you can."
"I hold myself back."
"So stop holding yourself back."
"I can't stop holding myself back. If I give in just a little..."
"What?"
"I don't know."
"It's just two bodies."
"I know."
"Two bodies touching."
"I know."
"Two bodies touching and feeling good."
"I know!"
"There's nothing wrong with that. So let yourself feel good."
There is something wrong with that. With feeling good. That's what my mind told me. No matter how much I knew better.
"You can't just tell yourself to feel a certain way and then feel it," I defended myself.
Again, she sighed, exasperated. I felt her giving up on me. I was too slow a student. Hopeless. Feeling safe in the familiarity of my limitations.
"It's so obvious," she said.
"What?"
"And I thought..."
Her voice trailed off.
"Thought what?" I pressed.
"I thought you had more of a grip on it. Enough to be able to write the play. I guess you can see something well enough to turn it into theater without being able to solve it in your own life."
"What exactly are you talking about?"
I knew what she was talking about. I knew she was talking about the fact that I felt so guilty about my sister, that I didn't feel like I deserved to have any pleasure of my own. But I wanted to hear her say it. I felt like it would be soothing to hear her say it. But that's not what she said.
"I'm talking about the fact that you're so afraid of being like your sister that you go to the other extreme."
I had to let that sink in for a moment. I'd never thought of it just like that. "Would you say that again?" It was as if what she said was so true, my brain couldn't grasp it. Like my brain had to grasp itself.
"Well, I didn't know your sister of course. I'm just getting this from the play. But it seems like she was on the promiscuous side, right?"
"Yes."
"And she was a very difficult person to be around, right?"
"Yes."
"She had all these highs and lows. And it was unpredictable."
"Yes."
"And it scares you. You don't want to become like her. Because she was like, out of control. And look what she did. So you go out of your way to be totally in control."
I looked up at the ceiling. And I felt my throat tense up. From swallowing the truth. There it was. The story of my life.
"But I mean, God, Jennifer. That doesn't mean you have to completely turn yourself off. You aren't her. You're not going to go bonkers like she did."
"We don't know that."
"Well how are you ever going to find out if you don't test the waters?"
"Maybe it's better not to find out. I mean, there's nothing so wrong with the way I am."
"You're really scared shitless, aren't you."
"My life isn't that bad. I mean, compared to her. I think I'm doing okay."
"Right. Well. Whatever," she said. And she rolled away from me. After a minute she said, "Good night, Jennifer."
"Good night."
And she fell asleep.
I didn't.
After lying there for ten minutes with my eyes wide open and my body pumped with enough adrenaline to fight off a pack of wild dogs, I got out of her bed, changed into my clothes, went down the stairs past the schmushed dead water-bug, out of her building, onto the street and hailed a cab. I got one immediately, even though it was three o'clock in the morning. And I slid into the backseat and squinched down so the unshaven cabdriver with the beady eyes wouldn't see me because I felt sure that he was toying with the idea of kidnapping me to the Bronx and raping me in an empty parking lot and then dumping my body in a garbage bin outside a Dunkin Donuts.
Fifteen minutes later I was safe, alone, home in my own bed, where I promptly fell asleep.
I had just ordered. The waiter had just poured the wine. I had just buttered a piece of bread. I was just about to bring it to my mouth. Just about to take a bite.
But I didn't bring it to my mouth because Peter was leaning forward to tell me something. And I didn't want to be chewing the bread like some cow while he was leaning over telling me something.
"There's something I want to talk with you about," he said. And I put the bread down. I could tell by his face it was important. "I'm glad we could meet in person, because it's better than doing this on the phone."
He looked down at his empty place setting, nervous about what he was going to say. Then he looked back at me, full in the face. His face full of gravity. His blue eyes sort of warm and icy at the same time.
I wondered what it would be. He's gay? Madly in love with me? Sick of the sight of me?
"I don't want you to see this as any kind of attack or criticism."
This sounded bad. I looked down into my bread crust.
"And you know," he went on, "that I believe wholeheartedly in you and your writing."
This sounded really bad. Like maybe that piece of bread would never get to my mouth.
"But I'm thinking that you might want to think about, in the second act of the play, doing some rewrites."
"You want me"—I felt relieved—"to do some rewrites?" I took pride in my willingness and open mind when it came to rewrites. Maybe too willing and open, because of a compulsive need to please. And rewriting was usually something I enjoyed. First drafts were hard because they involved exposure and spontaneity and a plunge into the unknown. Rewrites mostly involved going back over ground that's already been explored. No problem.
"Just in the second act," he said. "And it could just be a matter of a few lines. Important lines, I think. But we aren't talking major changes."
"I've been doing small rewrites all along. That's no big deal, so why are you acting like you're stepping on all my toes?"
"Even though I'm not talking major rewrites in terms of quantity, I do think they're important, and so I know it might seem like I'm contradicting myself because I told you when we began that I thought the play was finished."
"Yes, you did say that."
"But the truth is, I was very enamored of the play."
"Now you aren't?"
"I am! But as we've been rehearsing..."
"And you've gotten to know me better..."
"The play better..."
&n
bsp; "Me and the play..."
"I'm seeing ways to help you truly realize the play."
"You don't think the play is realized?"
"I thought it was. But now I've realized that it's not quite realized."
I couldn't say anything to this.
Stage direction: She does not respond.
"Look," he said. "I know how annoying this must be."
She still does not respond.
"But I'm only trying to help make your play as good as it could possibly be."
"Does this have something to do with Annie's problems with the part?"
"This has to do with my thoughts about your play. That's all. Do you want to hear what I have to say?"
"Do I have a choice?"
"Okay," he said, choosing to forget the bitter tone in my voice. Choosing to ignore the fact that I wanted him to tell me that everything I wrote was brilliant just the way it was and also, by the way, he'd fallen madly and passionately in love with me and knew the secret to unlocking my sexuality and wanted to treat me to a wild night of—
"In the third scene," he said, "when Melanie blows up at Julia." He paused for dramatic effect. "Does she say everything that she needs to say?"
I thought for a moment. Actually, I took a moment to make it appear like I was thinking for a moment. "Yes. She does."
"Are you sure?"
"Yes. She says a lot. She blows up. She says horrible things!"
"Are they really so horrible?"
"Yes!"
"So horrible that the audience believes that they're bad enough to drive Julia to kill herself?"
"They don't have to be that horrible. They only have to be
horrible enough for Melanie to believe that she's driven Julia to kill herself."
"I disagree," he said.
He of all people, I thought, of all guilty souls, should know what I was talking about.
"Fine," I said. "So disagree."
"I'm not saying that you can't leave it like it is."
"Thank you,” I said icily. He ignored my sarcasm.
"But I'm thinking you could get a lot more out of it if you made it so blatantly hostile that we truly believe Melanie could've pushed Julia over the edge."
"I think the audience does believe that. I think her words are that hostile."
"They may seem hostile to you. But you happen to be a very sensitive person."
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