“Do you know what we’re doing here, Sanders?”
“What?”
“We’re painting word-pictures, and we’re not even using words.”
I took the band between my teeth, put my hands on his buttocks, and carefully pulled the front of his shorts down over his genital area—with my teeth, mind you, which they don’t teach at the Meriweather School in Badger.
His thing hung there, trying to levitate.
I let the elastic band slip from between my teeth—softly, of course—and drew back a bit. Then I put my right arm between his legs and grabbed the back of his shorts and rolled them down sort of lingeringly over his ass, letting my knuckles glide lightly over the narrow cleft.
Finally I raised both hands to his armpits and then moved my fingers slowly down the sides of his body, taking the shorts with me when I reached his thighs.
He stepped out of them.
I whispered, “This is a no-pressure event, Sanders. You don’t have to do a thing. I know you kind of enjoy just looming up there above me.”
Then I whispered, “Get my shoes, Sanders, would you?”
My patent-leather dress pumps were still in the bathroom.
“I’m not completely dressed,” I whispered. “You’ve got to dress me, Sanders. All the way. Every stitch. I love it so much.”
He went and got my shoes. I sat at the end of the bed. My feet are pretty ordinary, just feet, I don’t know what else you could say about them, but Sanders seemed to regard them with awe, and he fitted each shoe as tenderly as some fairy-tale prince might do.
I went and stood in the middle of the room.
“I love how you dressed me, Sanders. You were so good. Did you like the way I took off your clothes?”
“No one’s ever done that before.”
“Of course not,” I whispered. “And no one’s ever dressed me before. And there was no pressure. And you did so well. You were so tender and patient and gentle.”
His thing began floating upward. I was almost too exhausted to care. I was like a pastry chef who creates a swirling masterpiece for the president of the republic, but would never think of sitting down and eating a hunk of the leftover stuff. Sanders’s cock was more or less a leftover.
Anyway, he approached and kissed me, his hands gripping my bottom, and started grinding, grinding. He pushed me toward the bed and took my jacket off almost in the same motion. I sat on the bed and he practically tore the buttons off my ruffled shirt. I remembered the cravat. My fifty-dollar purple eyesore. He hadn’t tied on the cravat. I knew it was just a passing thought.
He pulled my T-shirt over my head and started on my pants. His cock was bobbing the way Georgie Schlagel’s used to when I spread Oil of Olay all over it.
He remembered my shoes, and took them off before he tried to get the trousers past my feet. There was nothing left but the teddy pants, if I remember correctly.
I wondered if we’d have to stop so I could dress him. No, that was going too far.
He took the undies off and we flopped onto the bed together. I think we were athwart the bed if that means crosswise. Sanders licked me everywhere, nuzzled my labia, from the Latin, and blew on my face and in my ears, and nibbled me so good, and ran the ends of his fingers around and around my nipples, and then he entered, entered, entered, and we did a wild sort of rolling hoop routine that would have been impossible if we’d thought about it for so much as two seconds.
Sanders had a lot of prowess for an insecure man. We bumped and slammed and rattled and shook. The written history of these boudoir seductions is thousands of years old and I can’t add anything to it except for my own little personal delight in both our bodies just doing so well, and sort of liking each other, and turning a long night that was having its schizy moments into a triumphal, world-class event.
when we were finished and wringing wet and feeling a little reflective, I kissed Sanders about where his breastbone is and then just settled my head there and we listened to the wind howl and to the little specks of ice go ricocheting off the window.
“It’s so hard being a man,” he said.
“I know, I know.”
“Is it hard being a woman?”
“It’s a bitch.”
“Women know so much.”
“Does that make it harder to be a man?”
“God, yes, terribly.”
“Well, there’s not much I can say except we’re not about to start getting dumber.”
“I know,” he said. “It’s going to be awful.”
“Men will adjust. Don’t you think?”
“We’ll have to, but it will take its toll. It already has. I pity future generations.”
“Men will adjust, Sanders.”
“Take yourself, for example. You’re tall, vigorous, attractive, a brilliant athlete, and smart, too. How do we adjust to that?”
“I don’t want to sound high and mighty, but I happen to be one of a kind, at least as far as my athletic ability is concerned. I’m the first. That means I have my own set of problems and adjustments.”
“But you’re equal to it, Cleo. You know you are. You wouldn’t have been able to get this far if you didn’t have tremendous will.”
“It’s hard, Sanders, and sometimes it’s lonely.”
“You’re not as lonely as I am,” he said.
“I’m pretty lonely.”
“I’m lonely all the time. I’m lonely when I’m by myself and I’m lonely in a crowd. TV makes me lonely, radio makes me lonely, airports make me loneliest of all. Maybe the answer is a family. But I’m afraid my kids won’t respect me.”
“Why not?”
“I’m afraid I won’t give them the right input. I don’t see myself as a father. I see myself as a son. At most a brother. The idea of being a father is awesome. My own father handled it well. He was able to bring it off. He just sort of walked through it. I admire that in a man.”
“You have more to offer than you think.”
“I wish I could believe that, Cleo.”
“You have lots of prowess, for instance.”
“No one’s ever said that before.”
“Some women don’t care that much for prowess in a man. Maybe I’ll feel the same way someday. Maybe I’ll want different things out of love. Tenderer, paler.”
“I doubt it, Cleo.”
“You never know. There’s plenty of time for change.”
“Change isn’t necessarily improvement,” he said.
“Maybe improvement’s overrated. I’ll take change four times out of five.”
Out in the hall some conventioneers went by, making noise, and that reminded me it was time to break camp and roll on home.
I got dressed in the bathroom. Sanders put on his kimono to see me to the door. I noticed matching sandals this time. He stuck his nose in my hair. I walked down the hall to the elevator, wondering what kind of snowballs you could make from whatever a howling blizzard leaves behind.
5
Shaver Stevens was waiting in my apartment, all whitish blond and green-eyed and broad of shoulder. Just sitting there in a canvas chair with a Wadi Assad book in his lap.
He barely raised his head when I walked in the door. There was a soft smile in his eyes. We were just kids really, both of us, but there was a tenderness to this moment that was so deep and warm and familiar that I felt an eerie kind of twilight glow. We were like an old married couple who look at each other one day and realize they’ve had a pretty good life together and are still going strong.
We spent some quiet days getting to know each other, being amused by each other, reading and walking and feeling just so satisfied to be together. He didn’t say anything about this problem of his, but I figured all would come in good time. We were busy looking at each other. We looked all the time. We studied eyes and hair and teeth. We found immense interest in earlobes and feet. I rapped my knuckles on his rock-hard chest and we listened to
the hollow thump. Mostly we just looked. We studied each other up close, from across the room, walking, sitting, in snow and rain, on buses and in elevators, through windows, along corridors, in the diamond district, and at the zoo.
We also spent a lot of time munching on Ralphies, which are those bite-sized bits of whorly snack food that you can only get, as far as anyone knows, in one little Chinese grocery down behind the courthouses.
It was fun living with Shaver, even if he was rock hard with none of the fleshy parts that the wandering hand likes to grab hold of. I just couldn’t get enough of looking at him.
Shaver had that bantam vanity you see in undersized athletes. He was all chest. He practically walked with his chest. He had semidwarfish arms and held his head high and he seemed to be trying to rise into the air as he walked. He was all deltoids, pecs, and lats.
I’d watch him sometimes clipping the hair in his nostrils. I’d watch him trying to check out his profile in the mirror and he’d practically slide one eyeball into his ear to get a good look. His face was plain, compact, and boyish. He was missing several front teeth as a result of a series of stick duels when he was in the juniors, but he had a plate he stuck in there except for when he was in and around the bed.
Shaver is the only person I’ve ever known who brushes his tongue. His dentist convinced him it was important. Apparently, brushing your tongue gets rid of bacteria that accumulate, mostly overnight. Shaver always brushed his tongue before sex. I used to watch him.
He spent as much time looking at me as he did looking at himself, or as I did looking at him. We were constantly maneuvering to get fresh views of each other. He kept telling me how much he liked my small-town look. By this he meant my slightly upturned nose, which used to be the bane of my life until I finally accepted the fact that being cute isn’t necessarily fatal.
We kind of bathed in each other’s glow.
Sanders Meade called.
“I want to see you, Cleo.”
“Negative.”
“I was afraid you’d say that and I can’t say I’m surprised. I was expecting it. I always expect it. That’s probably why I get it.”
“We’ll talk sometime.”
“We play the Flames tomorrow night in their building. Let’s have dinner after the game. It won’t be snowing in Atlanta. Little joke.”
“We’ll talk, Sanders.”
“You have someone there. Is that it? I half expected it. I almost didn’t call. I wanted to call yesterday, but I was afraid you’d have someone there. Okay, it’s happened before. I’ll just go to a movie and then come back and make myself some hot chocolate. No problem.”
Floss Penrose called.
“I need to talk,” she said.
“Of course.”
“Can you talk?”
“Of course I can talk.”
“Is someone there?”
“It doesn’t matter, Floss. We can talk. What’s wrong?”
“Who’s there, Cleo?”
“A friend.”
“Male or female?”
“Aw, come on. Floss, what is this?”
“It’s not Archie, is it?”
“Of course it’s not Archie. It’s the man you got so mad at me over.”
“The fellow with the sweater over his head?”
“And the pants around his ankles.”
“The arms up around his ears?”
“The fellow with the boxer shorts,” I said.
“You’re sure, Cleo?”
“His thing hanging out.”
“Let him say something over the phone.”
“Floss, why?”
“I want to be sure it’s not Archie.”
“You won’t take my word?”
“When I get in one of these states, Cleo, nobody’s word means a thing. I know I’ve been avoiding you lately, but I need to talk to someone, and since you know about Archie and me, I feel I can unburden myself freely.”
“Of course you can. I’m happy you called. I want to be your friend.”
“If you want to be my friend, put that man on the phone and make him say something so I’ll know it’s not Archie who’s with you. You have to do this for me. I’m in one of my states. When I get like this, I insist that people indulge every paranoid whim that pops into my mind.”
“That’s why your life isn’t exactly overcrowded with friends.”
“Fuck friends,” she said. “This is fear and terror we’re dealing with.”
“What are you afraid of?”
“First put that fellow on the phone and make him say something.”
What could I do but shrug my shoulders, call Shaver to the phone, and ask him to say something?
“Hi,” he said.
I could hear Floss’s voice: “Not nearly enough. Make him say more.”
“Walla Walla, Washington,” he said.
Floss said: “More. Give me more. I need to he absolutely certain.”
I pictured her with bulging eyes, practically bald from having her hair cut twice a day, and wearing black rings on every finger.
“Give her more. Shaver.”
“My full name is Charles William Stevens. They call me Shaver because that’s what my dad called me when I was little. Little shaver.”
I took the phone.
“All right?” I said.
“Thank you, Cleo. That was sweet of both of you. I’m already calming down.”
“Now tell me what’s been bothering you.”
“It’s Archie. What else? He wants to call it quits.”
“Why?”
“He said he doesn’t get the same perverse wallop he used to get out of our Monopoly games.”
“Did you see him?”
“He called. He’s in Sri Lanka. He said the games were great, and he’ll always think fondly of his sweet old Aunt Glad, but the old debased feeling just isn’t there anymore. The unnatural, slimy, incestlike pleasure.”
“Maybe that’s just more of his understated humor.”
“He was serious. Cleo. He said he’ll never really grow up until he stops playing Monopoly with me. He’s right, of course. I don’t know what I’m going to do. I count on Archie’s visits. The time we spend is precious to me.”
“Maybe you can spend time without playing Monopoly.”
“It would never work.”
“I guess you’re right.”
“When you share something this deeply neurotic with someone, you can’t just cut it out of your lives and expect to continue seeing each other in a different light and on a different level. Being abnormal with someone is so deeply ingrained in both of you that not to be abnormal would be even more abnormal. The tension would be fantastic. My God, I am two decades older than Archie. Can we sit around talking tennis?”
“I guess not.”
“I’ve sat across the table from this young man, this boy, really, absolutely naked except for one brassiere cup which I would be holding with one hand while I moved the little green race car around the Monopoly board with the other. We’re supposed to take walks on the beach at Montauk?”
“No.”
“We’re supposed to drink Perrier water with lime slices?”
“No, Floss.”
“Shakespeare in the park?”
“I guess not.”
“This boy and I are supposed to go antiquing in Connecticut? We’re supposed to toss a Frisbee in the Sheep Meadow?”
“What you need is a good night’s sleep.”
“I need to get out of this business. I need to get away.”
“I agree.”
“I look like Death in Venice. People get on the elevator and shrink away from me.”
“Maybe Archie will change his mind.”
“He’s too intelligent. He’d have to be crazy to change his mind.”
“You ought to get away, definitely.”
“I ought to get out of this business.
It’s no longer a challenge. I need something totally obsessive. The way to survive this crisis is to throw myself mind and body into some compulsively demanding preoccupation. Something I can totally immerse myself in. It has to be something that will occupy me from the core of my being to the very tips of my fingers.”
“I was going to suggest a weekend in Saint Thomas.”
“It has to be something that no one else could succeed in because no one else would be willing to pay the emotional and physical price. When my toy bulldog died, I became an athlete’s agent. I totally immersed myself. I became obsessive. I looked like The Grapes of Wrath. I have to go beyond that now. It’s the only way. I’ll let you know what happens. We’ll have lunch if I can spare the time.”
It was about this time that my memories of Badger started getting stronger, more frequent. It was like a pull from the ocean. Time, consciousness etc. It was as though I somehow sensed that I would need a mental refuge in the days and weeks to come.
Home.
My mother taught Latin three days a week at the Catholic school in Toms Ferry, across the river. There weren’t enough nuns to go around so they had to bring in someone in a polka-dot dress. Both my parents come from families that have been stark Presbyterian as far back as anyone’s bothered to count, but my mother learned some Latin from a quirky aunt who had ancient Rome on the brain, and Dorothy (Mom) stayed interested right into adulthood.
Latin was something to be preserved, like good manners or elm trees, and I think she also liked the fact that no one actually spoke the language. Just by conjugating verbs with a bunch of kids in Toms Ferry, she was keeping something alive.
Around the house, she and my dad would occasionally bat around some Latin phrases or roots or common endings—in his case totally made up, like, “Pass the saltus, please.” My father was like that. He would be purposely unfunny. This lack of funniness was supposed to be funny, but it hardly ever was. Tom Spencer Birdwell, as he liked to call himself, was at the mercy of his own corny sayings and bad jokes. Not that anyone minded. It was humor, even if it wasn’t funny, and I think it made our house a more cheerful place.
What my mother really excelled in, more than Latin, was the Christmas holidays. She was the five-star general of Christmas. Picking out the cards, making the gift lists, shopping for the tree. Searching out the proper turkey, decorating the tree, baking up a storm. Helping organize the carolers, keeping an eye on the Nativity scene my dad and I would put together on top of a big Chippendale table in the living room.
Amazons: An Intimate Memoir by the First Woman Ever to Play in the National Hockey League Page 8